Load balancing in Xenos; how good?

[nelg]

I recall this from the Xenos article;

This load balancing equation is inherently weighted, however information from the OS or even the application itself, which is obviously given the control by the developer, can alter that weighting a little in order to affect the prioritisation of the vertex and pixel shader programs. ATI's experiments show that the algorithm gives a quite optimal throughput and they expect only a few teir-1 developers will actually look into the altering the weighting of the algorithm.

So any insight as to how well it has performed in the real world? Has anyone had to alter the weighting?

 

[ERP]

While I haven't honestly messed with it.
Your probably talking about <5% gains. which is worthwhile, and experimenting is relatively cheap once your done with the game.

 

[22psi]

While I haven't honestly messed with it.
Your probably talking about <5% gains. which is worthwhile, and experimenting is relatively cheap once your done with the game.

Oh, it's something you can tinkle with after the game is done not something you have to build in mind from the get go.

 

[ERP]

Oh, it's something you can tinkle with after the game is done not something you have to build in mind from the get go.

It's just a number, I guess you could make some arbitrary decision up front and optimise for it, but I'd expect most people to get a "finished" game, and run a bunch of benchmarks to see if it's worth changing.

 

[AlNom]

Is it just a weighting that tries to hide latencies

 

[ERP]

Is it just a weighting that tries to hide latencies

Ask Dave, I'm tentative about describing what it does. Since I'm not sure what's public.
It doesn't change the algorithm or anything.

 

[22psi]

Ask Dave, I'm tentative about describing what it does. Since I'm not sure what's public.
It doesn't change the algorithm or anything.

could you tell us what games your developing for 360/PS3?

 

[ERP]

FWIW I'm currently working on a PC title for the first time in about 12 years.
I was working on a PS3/Xbox360 title until recently.
I'd rather not state which title it's high profile and I really don't want to have people asking questions I can't answer about it.

 

[22psi]

aww

 

[AlNom]

Fair enough, thank you ERP.

 

[nelg]

While I haven't honestly messed with it.
Your probably talking about <5% gains. which is worthwhile, and experimenting is relatively cheap once your done with the game.

Cool, thanks for the insight ERP.