[computerbase] Project CARS benchmarks

[ShintaiDK]

Thank you for the link. So now for Nvidia to be hiding physx acceleration on pCARS we now have the following criteria:

1) Hide it from the physx indicator
2) Hide it from the OS that it's loading the DLL
3) Hide it from the control panel physx accelerator setting
4) Hide it from GPU monitoring tools

Tinfoil indeed.

Indeed. Ite the same story over and over. Its everyone else fault but AMD. Rerun from CPU section.

 

[Erenhardt]

Is there a reason why this game looks worse than DriveClub?
Weather effect are a joke. One would expect better from nvidia physx. I guess that is the reason why they are not in consoles.

This is how you do weather effects - DriveClub style

But no, they did this funny animation like someone was preying water from water spray bottle each time the wipers swing by. Looks comic.
They had whole nv physx to simulate particles - something that ps4 done a great job in DriveClub. But no, they wasted all that processing power probably on double-layer underground ocean.

 

[96Firebird]

The weather effects are in console...

 

[Silverforce11]

I was wondering when the terrible devs would put their ban hammer down on people telling the truth.

This was in response to a lot of posts from AMD users, very angry ones that went in full curse mode, they are wondering why their R290X or R295X2 run like a dog in this game.

I linked a FULL verbatim quote directly from Ian Bell, their lead developer, where he SPECIFICALLY raises the problem, identified as PhysX hammering the CPU on AMD setups.

There's no lies there when it comes from the man himself responsible for making the game.

On a side note, the devs have deleted several other complaints regarding poor AMD performance.

---------------

I think it may be a simple case of CPU PhysX on CPU = single core only, like in the old days IIRC. So if its bottle-necking 1 core, it will slow down the game. The question is why on NV GPUs, is there no effect. Maybe their DX11 MT driver is able to alleviate the GPU when 1 CPU core is hammered but AMD's can't, or that the devs put the render thread and the physics thread on the same thread. But definitely PhysX is the cause of the problem for AMD GPUs.

 

[SolMiester]

Is there a reason why this game looks worse than DriveClub?
Weather effect are a joke. One would expect better from nvidia physx. I guess that is the reason why they are not in consoles.

This is how you do weather effects - DriveClub style

But no, they did this funny animation like someone was preying water from water spray bottle each time the wipers swing by. Looks comic.
They had whole nv physx to simulate particles - something that ps4 done a great job in DriveClub. But no, they wasted all that processing power probably on double-layer underground ocean.

TBH, that looks rather pants...do you have Pcars rain effect on video?

 

[Zanovar]

Ouch. lots of peeps are into their driving games.not my thang.

 

[Zanovar]

Ouch. lots of peeps are into their driving games.not my thang.

christ watching that clip i feel like getting stuck in hahaha

 

[96Firebird]

Latest run with no PhysX installed. For this, I did a clean installation with the new driver and only installed the display driver, everything else was unchecked. Control panel was set to CPU for PhysX as well...

The results are actually higher, but that is probably because it was after a fresh restart to make sure the driver installed successfully.

Either way, I don't think any PhysX is being run by the GPU...

Time to install PhysX again, anything else to test?

 

[Silverforce11]

Firebird, how can the game work without PhysX installed?

 

[96Firebird]

CPU PhysX is included with the game, GPU PhysX needs the driver.

Edit - I'm checking right now to see if PhysX is still on my computer or not. I did a clean install of the driver, but PhysX is still listed in my Programs and Features list. I can't uninstall from there, so I'm looking for another way...

Edit 2 - Ok, this time I am certain PhysX was uninstalled... It was gone from Programs and Features, and also gone from the System Information --> Components tab, under 3D Settings. Before, it showed the version number there, now it is gone.

Same outcome though...

 

[Silverforce11]

Is it possible CPU PhysX on NV can run on multiple threads but for Intel/AMD, its restricted to one thread?

Their main engineer would not single out PhysX as a problem for AMD performance if its not true.

 

[Azix]

It's almost certain something funky is up with your results or how physx works in this game. The game needs physx, you've uninstalled the physx driver yet it works. That's why I asked if you'd be seeing the same hints of physx in this game as in others. Its more integral to the function of the game so maybe everything you need is already in the game files. it would mean it can't really be turned off even from the driver, or maybe only with certain configurations.


At least the results should not be so close together

 

[96Firebird]

Is it possible CPU PhysX on NV can run on multiple threads but for Intel/AMD, its restricted to one thread?

That I don't know, but it is a valid question.

It's almost certain something funky is up with your results or how physx works in this game. The game needs physx, you've uninstalled the physx driver yet it works. That's why I asked if you'd be seeing the same hints of physx in this game as in others. Its more integral to the function of the game so maybe everything you need is already in the game files. it would mean it can't really be turned off even from the driver, or maybe only with certain configurations.


At least the results should not be so close together

The game doesn't need the PhysX driver that Nvidia bundles with it's driver package. That is for GPU-accelerated PhysX only. That was the main goal of my testing, to see if the GPU was actually calculating any of the PhysX that is involved in this game. My preliminary conclusion is that it does not use GPU-PhysX, but I'd like to see more people test this.

DarkKnightDude, have you had a chance to do any more testing? If you need help getting data, let me know. I basically just used MSI Afterburner's logging for each run, used Excel for comma-delimiting, and found the data from that. I had each run simulated from the start, and the driver was very consistent each run. Be sure to have him start in the same position each run though, don't have it set to random. If he starts at the back of the pack, it will be much more demanding than if he starts at the front.

I think that will be my next set of tests, starting at the back of the pack. Before, he was starting at the front and I didn't get to see any other cars. Maybe that will change the results...

 

[Azix]

Comments from the developer suggest that physx is offloaded somewhat when there is an nvidia GPU. Your testing with that in mind just means its something done with or without the driver.

 

[96Firebird]

Comments from the developer suggest that physx is offloaded somewhat when there is an nvidia GPU. Your testing with that in mind just means its something done with or without the driver.

Where is that quote? Unless you are talking about cageymaru over @ HardForums, he isn't a developer...

And he said...

I never said that the basic calculations were being done on a GPU for Nvidia. I see that someone is running around creatively misquoting me on other forums just like the person creatively quoted Ian Bell. Which is really sad since all SMS wants to do is get the game working on AMD finally. Really they want to be able to sell the game to as many people as possible. They like money like most of us. Hopefully this will be fixed very soon!

Source

He also says some of the effects like smoke are on the GPU, but that doesn't help with the slower AMD cards on a clear race.

 

[Silverforce11]

He also says some of the effects like smoke are on the GPU, but that doesn't help with the slower AMD cards on a clear race.

Some AMD users have reported doing burnouts to cause a lot of smoke caused their fps to tank hard so I guess that explains it.

The HUD tanking the performance on AMD is clearly a game bug.

A few things here and there and suddenly a 960 is spanking the R290X hard.

As I've said in the other thread, I was too quick to blame NV's GameWorks. This game is clearly all on their devs who knew of the problems for a long time and never bothered to fix it, then even blamed AMD drivers for it, firstly saying they didn't communicate, then later recanting to admit communications have continued all that time.

 

[SirPauly]

Where is that quote? Unless you are talking about cageymaru over @ HardForums, he isn't a developer...

And he said...



Source

He also says some of the effects like smoke are on the GPU, but that doesn't help with the slower AMD cards on a clear race.

That Hardocp poster didn't specifically state it, but certainly fueled and unleashed the possibility --- started the train wreck.

 

[Silverforce11]

That Hardocp poster didn't specifically state it, but certainly fueled and unleashed the possibility --- started the train wreck.

It didn't help that the devs were being obtuse. They said its a PhysX problem for AMD because it hammers the CPU.

So why isn't it a problem for NV? They didn't clarify.

 

[3DVagabond]

That Hardocp poster didn't specifically state it, but certainly fueled and unleashed the possibility --- started the train wreck.

This is what he said and posted it as a direct quote from Ian Bell,

The software render person says that AMD drivers create too much of a load on the CPU. The PhysX runs on the CPU in this game for AMD users. The PhysX makes 600 calculations per second on the CPU. Basically the AMD drivers + PhysX running at 600 calculations per second is killing performance in the game. The person responsible for it is freaking awesome. So I'm not angry.

He's repeating what he was told by his "software render person". I'm not sure exactly what that job entails, but one would assume he knows how the game works.

 

[SirPauly]

It didn't help that the devs were being obtuse. They said its a PhysX problem for AMD because it hammers the CPU.

So why isn't it a problem for NV? They didn't clarify.

nVidia may of invested more driver resources on DirectX 11 MT than Amd.

 

[96Firebird]

The HUD tanking the performance on AMD is clearly a game bug.

That is a weird one, I toggled the HUD myself and it had no effect on my setup. I wonder what happened with that...

Smoke effects cut performance for me too, not so much when it happens but if I drive through it and it gets close to the "camera" (chase view) the FPS tanks. I should probably check and make sure I enabled GPU-PhysX again. That might not matter though...

Game looks great though, I've been waiting for a good racing sim on PC. Sadly, my PS3 controller freaks out when I hit the brake sometimes, gotta take it apart and hopefully fix it.

 

[Silverforce11]

nVidia may of invested more driver resources on DirectX 11 MT than Amd.

That would imply PhysX on AMD runs on the same thread as rendering, which would really explain the problem. It would also be a bad implementation job by the developers not to separate it. They must have saw no issues on NV due to its MT DX11 driver and just went with that.

 

[Alatar]

Ahem, 32 cars, rain, max settings, CPU vs GPU physX:

3 runs for both CPU and GPU physX to minimize the variance between runs.

And here's the worst case scenario run that I ran 6 times in total:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTllE5LqgrM

Right at the start of a race with all the cars on the screen and lots of water effects everywhere because of it. Also the player car visible so you have to render the water effects for that as well including all the rain drops on the car.

(also excuse the keyboard driving)

 

[Alatar]

Is it possible CPU PhysX on NV can run on multiple threads but for Intel/AMD, its restricted to one thread?

Their main engineer would not single out PhysX as a problem for AMD performance if its not true.

No, CPU PhysX Has been SSE and multithreaded for years at this point.

 

[Azix]

Where is that quote? Unless you are talking about cageymaru over @ HardForums, he isn't a developer...

And he said...



Source

He also says some of the effects like smoke are on the GPU, but that doesn't help with the slower AMD cards on a clear race.

He quoted a developer saying

The software render person says that AMD drivers create too much of a load on the CPU. The PhysX runs on the CPU in this game for AMD users.

That suggests some of it runs on GPU for nvidia users