DX12 Performance Discussion And Analysis Thread

http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2185079

I hope it's on day 1.

 

I think that was one of the best things Rory did at AMD, pushing heavily for the console market and for all of them.
IMO Nvidia screwed up by looking for margins rather than ensuring AMD did not dominate this sector, Nvidia I assume did not see this being a threat to PC game development by looking at past trends, which ignores how closely PC and consoles are aligned these days or how it allows a strong development strategy from AMD.

It is a subject though where it splits opinions; but for me I do tend to think a lot of the recent AAA improvements on AMD comes from the development focus requiring heavy optimisation to get the most out of consoles with developers engaging more actively with AMD (an area where AMD has been weak historically) on utilising the architecture.
It does feel like Nvidia is on the back foot for now, especially with AAA multi-platform games.

Cheers

 

Yep cap bits, when did MS say they will be stopping that lol, think that was DX9, no wait then in Dx10, yeah never happened lol.

 

DX10/11/12 caps bits and feature levels are nothing compared the DX9 era or the Khronos Extension hell.

 

true!

 

NVIDIA could not offer 64 bit ARM CPU/GPU SOC. It was out of the game from start, cost wise. Paying 2 Chips vs 1? even if it was, AMD could have then offered an APU + a second GPU, obliterating any NVIDIA+Intel CPU offer. For not talking of the advantages of HSA on development.

Intel was not interested at that time on high volume, low margin business (maybe now with their fabs not filled they reconsidered the mistake... but it is too late: backward compatibility has become a key for BOTH platform from now on).

 

I do not think it is that clear considering the H/W development history between Sony/Nvidia/IBM, and reports also suggest it was not clear where Nvidia were in the next gen bid; the CPU-GPU SoC in PS4 and XBox-one were not exactly cutting edge, but I do get there would be weighted advantages to the AMD solution and decision.
It will be interesting to see what Nintendo has planned, although I do not see that influencing the overall multi-platform development market.
Cheers

 

This gen shows clearly it was made with specific budget constraints: you dont get the specs first and then check the price, but the opposite way around. And performance/price there were only a winner: why do you think that BOTH consoles uses that technology??
If NVIDIA was not in the bid list, is just because they could not compete price/performance wise. Actually, AMD was the only one offering the best price/performance wise. If ARM64 were existing, then you'd bet NVIDIA would have been on the tender with AMD.

 

And if Nvidia had realised the risk of allowing AMD total control of the multi-platform development strateg and the results it is having now, I bet they would had foregone nearly all their margins to ensure they kept the Sony contract in some fashion.
That is where my original post comes in, the only thing really known from what I can tell is that Sony and Nvidia were not happy with each regarding margins even back with the PS3, and as you say these were to get tighter with next gen.
Cheers
Edit:
But yeah I agree they would have had an uphill battle against the AMD proposition, even if they decided to cut nearly all margins on their side.

 

According to Sony, other architectures were under consideration up until the last moment. It was greatly hinted or assumed that this meant ARM + something else (most likely NVidia). But the performance was significantly behind what they were getting with the AMD SOC. I think it was also hinted that AMD was more willing to make/implement custom changes at Sony's request and that factored into things as well.

Considering PS Vita used an ARM based core, many people were surprised when Sony didn't go with an ARM based solution for PS4.

Regards,
SB

 

Yeah,
and there was also talk of IBM with its more 'traditional' CPU, which could had been done with Nvidia.
Their long-term collaboration can still seen to be in effect with the work they did together bringing the Mezzanine NVlink and control between CPU-GPU.
Also there is the view of Ken Kutaragi of Sony and his feelings-support with the technology such implemented in PS3, was still an influential person.

And in some ways the debate could be reduced down to this; if there was no competitor to AMD proposition then they could had pushed for a greater margin and importantly more flexibility than they actually managed.
I think some did not appreciate how much of a commitment it was for AMD to go all in with the console contracts, not just from developing the hardware but also from a mandatory support to both Sony and Microsoft, even before they could do more with promoting-engaging architecture advantages with independent developers, and then the added logistics.

Shame though that Rory will not be remember for this business strategy, which IMO will be the turn around for the GCN architecture as it seemed until then AMD was only making small in-roads in changing studio development focus.
It would be interesting to see how timelines align with this and also Mantle with its development and then promotion-push, I would expect a certain level of synergy.
Cheers

 

Does AMD do any devrel for console developers?

 

Just quickly Square Enix, and Crystal Dynamics comes to mind with several of their recent or soon to be released games.
Cheers

 

I'm talking specifically about consoles, not the game in general. As far as I know, AMD doesn't do any console-specific devrel.

 

I especially glad to have bought the RX 480 after having read the newest AMD press release saying
„AMD reaffirms its DirectX 12 performance leadership with Futuremark’s new 3DMark Time Spy benchmark
Futuremark® has today released its newest benchmark, 3DMark® Time Spy, and Radeon™ graphics results further demonstrate AMD’s performance leadership in DirectX® 12. “
Accompanying it was this remarkable benchmark-(ch)art, reaffirming the Radeon's performance leadership in DX12.


edit:
Credit were it's due though: Props to the chart beginning at 0 actually!!

more edit:
Thanks to this, I can also run it on my HD 7970. Awesome!

 

Maybe I misunderstand the context.
So you are not talking about developers-studio being given assistance from AMD in the development stage for games designed initially on consoles in context of AMD CPU-GPU architecture?
Slightly different topic but still relevant to this, is also the porting of said games from console to PC, exacerbated by outsourcing in some instances.
Cheers

 

3Dmark Time spy Guru3D numbers are out with Async compute on and off.. pretty interesting numbers with Pascal.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/futuremark-3dmark-timespy-benchmark-review,1.html

 

You said "[...] to get the most out of consoles with developers engaging more actively with AMD [...] on utilising the architecture." And I assert that AMD does not work directly with console developers on their console-specific code.

AMD does work with developers on PC implementations of games. Many of which are console games, too. But that is not the same as console-specific devrel.

So, I'm asking if there are instances of AMD working on console-specific code.

 

Right,
I can say AMD has worked directly with Square Enix on development for the console games, that are also ported to PC.
Or are we going to exclude all multi-platform games-studios, which sort of cuts out most AAA games?
Cheers

 

Code that runs under console APIs isn't the same as code that runs on PC APIs.

For a start the consoles have different architectures (unified memory is a big deal).

A lot of shader code will be the same (subject to translation for the graphics language) but shader code isn't the only code that makes a game. Code/help that AMD contributes for the PC game prolly will affect the console implementation, but that isn't console devrel. AMD isn't targetting the consoles specifically, I believe.

The CPU/memory/GPU systems on consoles are sufficiently different that mere PC code won't get the desired performance on consoles.

EDIT: unified to replace homogenous