OpenGL & Vulkan

[hitbm47]

Hi everyone & colesdav‌

I have mentioned my system configuration in a lot of other post, but basically:

- Windows 10 64-bit

- AMD FX 8350 stock clock speed

- 16 GB DD3 1866Mhz RAM

- RX 480 MSI GAMING X 8G

- MSI 990FXA Gaming Motherboard

colesdav‌ I just purchased 3DMARK on special at steam store and would like to ask if you or anyone else would be willing to run the API Overhead Benchmark in 3DMARK on your everyday Nvidia GPU to test the driver overhead versus my AMD Radeon.

I left all settings at default,

Herewith, I am attaching my first benchmark.

Kind regards

Jacques

[hitbm47]

I found DirectX 12 to be very impressive compared to current actual performance in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where DirectX 12 performs worse on my system than DirectX 11 does for that game.

I also remember having issues with DirectX 12 in Battlefield 1, and therefore have only finished the campaign on DX11.

Jacques

[colesdav]

Sure, I can do it but can you tell me the objective?
Is this related to your Crysis 3 Low FPS issue?
Is i7-4770K + GTX780Ti vs R9 Nano ok?  - do you want me to turn off some cores to match your CPU?
All my other machines are busy at the moment.

Thanks.

[colesdav]

Just for reference:

https://community.amd.com/thread/239684 

[hitbm47]

Hi colesdav‌

Thank you, only if you are interested, please don't feel forced to do it.

It is basically to determine the current state of Graphics API overhead on CPU cores of AMD vs Nvidia, and if AMD still has to improve on their DirectX 11 overhead, which is important, since even some of the DirectX 12 ports perform worse than DX11.

You only have to test the Nvidia setup vs my RX 480 screenshot. In addition, you don't have to disable cores, but rather if safe you can downclock the i7-4770k to match the FX 8350's single core performance approximately. CPUz is a valuable tool for measuring CPU performance.

But you can test the i7-4770k at stock speeds as well, but although the FX 8350 is not that far behind on multi-core, it is far behind that i7 on single core.

Kind regards

Jacques

[colesdav]

Sure no problem.

I think the best place to look at current state of AMD DirectX11 overhead versus Nvidia will be on public benchmarks by independent reviewers from July 7th 2019 when the RX5700XT and RX5700 GPUs are released and benchmarked against Nvidia GPUs in DX11 titles and probably also benchmarked on the 3DMark API Overhead benchmark you mention.

It will be interesting to see if the  DirectX11 Hardware SScheduler on Navi is better than previous AMD GPUs.
See this: AMD vs NV Drivers: A Brief History and Understanding Scheduling & CPU Overhead - YouTube 

You might want to ask someone like Gamers Nexus or Hardware unboxed to run the test, but likely someone will run it.
I will be reading the reviews of Navi cards and waiting for the prices to drop before I even think of purchasing one.
If I see someone has run the API overhead test in a review I will post the link here.

Thanks

[hitbm47]

Hi colesdav‌

Thank you, I understand what you are suggesting me to do, but the problem is you can't really test API Overhead with modern CPUs, which reviewers most often do, since they are very good even at single threaded performance, which almost eliminates API Overhead.

Thus you really need something like an FX 8350, i7 870, i7 2600, etc., which has pretty good multithreaded performance but not to good single threaded performance, to test the efficiency of GPU drivers for APIs such as DirectX or Vulkan.

CPUs such as i7 4770k are already so good at single threaded performance, that API  Overhead does not occur on it very often.

Jacques

[hitbm47]

In addition, buying new CPUs isn't always the best solution, since drivers are not supposed to increase overhead just because new CPUs can handle it.

[hitbm47]

Hi everyone

So I was able to do a test myself, and the conclusion according to 3DMark is that AMD's DirectX 11 API overhead is much, much worse than Nvidia's, at least for a RX 480 vs GT 710.

Here are the DirectX11 results,

RX 480:

CPU Single Threaded Draw Calls   :   1 082 226

CPU Multi Threaded Draw Calls      :   1 100 472

GT 710:

CPU Single Threaded Draw Calls   :   1 734 508

CPU Multi Threaded Draw Calls      :   2 025 507

Yes the RX 480 DirectX12 & Vulkan benchmarks are impressive, but there are some serious problems with older APIs for the RX 480 and I really hope AMD can/will do something about it, because that and other driver issues are currently causing serious performance problems for the RX 480 in 50% of the games.

Jacques

[hitbm47]

Hi @ketxxx 

I am linking your post here, https://community.amd.com/t5/drivers-software/awful-single-and-multi-threaded-dx11-graphics-driver-p... it was closed when I tried to stand up for you since someone called you a "nvidia fudster" and no one, not even the developers tried to help, even though you are/were a Radeon owner.

If you are still a Radeon user I hope you will be able to still share your troubles here, and please, very PLEASE can we get a response from the developers before ray_m closes this post for the unacceptable reason that it is from 2019, there has been no response to these post from someone higher up and you just decide to close them when we; YOUR CUSTOMERS; require insight to why things aren't being improved upon? One reason to justify a lack of response is 2020, but then don't close threads when we want some insight in 2021.

We need information as to where things are standing to with improving DirectX11 multihtreaded draw call compatibility with games such as Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 / Contracts, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed Black Flag / Origins, etc. which are impacted hard when pairing a Radeon GPU with a High Core count CPU to the point where it dips to 29FPS with 20% CPU and 50-70% GPU utilization.

Please @xhuang @dipak @dorisyan I mean no disrespect to you guys since you have done a lot to be helpful from AMD, if you can help and just give everyone some insight on how these games communicate through DirectX11 that causes us Radeon users to struggle with underutilized hardware before this post is also closed and rubbed beneath the carpet.

Kind regards