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[PCPER] 3DMark API Overhead Feature Test

M

monstercameron

Diamond Member
Though minimal in quantity compared to the grand scheme of things we want to test with, the results we are showing here today paint a very positive picture about the future of DirectX 12. Since the announcement of Mantle from AMD and its subsequent release in a couple of key titles, the move to an API with less overhead and higher efficiency has been clamored for by enthusiasts, developers and even hardware vendors. Microsoft stepped up the plate, willing to sacrifice so much of what made DirectX a success the past to pave a new trail with DirectX 12.

Futuremark's new 3DMark API Overhead Feature Test proves that something as fundamental as draw calls can be drastically improved upon with forward thinking and a large dose of effort. We saw improvements in API efficiency as high as 18-19x with the Radeon R9 290X when comparing DX12 and DX11 results and while we definitely won't see that same kind of outright gaming performance with the new API, it gives developers a completely new outlook on engine development and integration. Processor bottlenecks that users didn't even know existed can now be pushed aside to stretch the bounds of what games can accomplish. It might not turn the world on it's head day one, but I truly think that APIs like DX12 and Vulkan (what Mantle has become for Khronos) will alter gaming more than anyone previous thought...
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dx12-980.png


dx12-290x.png


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_6PxugCBa0

source: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/3DMark-API-Overhead-Feature-Test-Early-DX12-Performance
 
Rvenger said:
AMD optimized DX12 on latest driver even more?
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If you're referring to Star Swarm's results, then no. Star Swarm ran into hardware bottlenecks. Compared to Star Swarm, this test is meant to avoid bottlenecks such as those as much as possible. AMD wasn't slower with DX12; they were slower at Star Swarm. Star Swarm was too game-like.

This is purely an API efficiency test.

Mantle being 30% faster is surprising but not really unexpected. AMD has put more research (and actual work, too) into these lower-overhead APIs than anyone else so a small lead was to be expected.
 
Didn't see this coming at all. Kinda sucks for all those who shell out extra money on the 970 and get nerfed with 3.5 gb of memory and now this. I hope Nvidia update their DX12 drivers real soon.
 
it's nice to see this huge improvements, but it's always good to remember that it's only a draw calls test, not gaming performance test

dx12-285.png


improving draw calls by 20 times could mean a 0% FPS gain in many cases.

also interesting to note how far ahead Nvidia is in DX11 efficiency... something we've been using for the past 5 years...
 
positivedoppler said:
Didn't see this coming at all. Kinda sucks for all those who shell out extra money on the 970 and get nerfed with 3.5 gb of memory and now this. I hope Nvidia update their DX12 drivers real soon.
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What do you mean? 30%-ish is nothing.

That's the difference between AMD and Nvidia's single-thread DX11 performance and it hardly ever makes a difference in games.

Realistically you'll rarely see edge cases where the difference will show up. Just like DX11 CPU efficiency rarely pops up (and then only in games that make use of DX11 MT which AMD doesn't support, and even then it's not the 2x difference these results imply).

Metrics like these are all academic. In the end real world performance is what matters, and this is not that.
 
Why am I getting higher DX11 DC/s in both single and 4 core multi threaded than the latest cpu's?

2cngb9.png

Is there a smiley for smug?
 
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How much cpu time is taken up by the api though, mantle performs similar to dx12, but that didn't result in massive performance increases.
 
csbin said:
DX12=MANTLE :hmm:
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Well, this is oddly similar if you ask me:

CBBu9COWwAAPzZB.jpg:large


Ofc, it doesn't prove anything but I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft came and told that yes DX12 is practically a tweaked Mantle like how OGL Foundation (Vulkan) did.
 
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Osjur said:
Well, this is oddly similar if you ask me:

CBBu9COWwAAPzZB.jpg:large


Ofc, it doesn't prove anything but I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft came and told that yes DX12 is practically a tweaked Mantle like how OGL Foundation (Vulkan) did.
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There's no need to deny it. DX12 is tweaked Mantle so more GPUs can support it.

Johan Anderson @ DICE, the main architect of Mantle pretty much said so flat out on twitter a long time ago. Someone in his position would not joke about such things.

It is great to see massive benefits, with DX12 minimum fps should be a LOT better, frame times a lot smoother and developers can build more complex scenes, a lot further LOD, lots of little details that would have bottlenecked drawcalls/CPU on DX11.
 
[deleted]

This is a forum for technical discussion -- act like an adult when posting in it.
-- stahlhart
 
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Even with these massive improvements. I see SPIR-V and Vulkan being really disruptive techs. They allow third parties to do something never before possible, they can make their own OpenGL and DX like graphics libraries and get the same performance as either OpenGL or DX.

It has the potential to be a really big deal. Libraries built on top of Vulkan and SPIR-V are going to be able to move, advance, and change at crazy speeds. On top of that, the GPU is going to be opened up to all sorts of new languages (Java, C++, Haskell, rust, etc)
 
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