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Advanced DirectX12 Graphics and Performance - Discussion

E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
sfried said:
Yeah, but most hardcore PC enthusiasts always say it's best to do a clean install whenever there's a major OS update, even if it's just a Service Pack. I just don't understand how they can find the time and reinstall everything and retain the same setttings, particularly when it comes to certain programs/games that need particular patches, quirky settings, inf/conf file changes etc.. It's like needing to memorize every single programs fixes/configs.

Yeah, Steam lets you do could sync and stuff but not all games support it, and also there's a boatload of GOG stuff too where you have to go into the forums and read carefully how to make certain games run better for certain setups. Hopefully the Cleanup utility is really robust at removing excess/obsolete registries and also does something to keep your PC lean even after a Service Pack install.
Click to expand...

Hah. I haven't done a clean install in years. I went from Vista to 7 to 8 on the same setup. Then I replaced the motherboard on the same Windows 8.1 install. Everything's working just fine.
 
G

gamechanger87

Member
Easy_D said:
Hah. I haven't done a clean install in years. I went from Vista to 7 to 8 on the same setup. Then I replaced the motherboard on the same Windows 8.1 install. Everything's working just fine.
Click to expand...

I'm looking forward to getting a new comp and doing a clean install. Will feel great!
 
J

JoJo UK

Unconfirmed Member
Easy_D said:
Hah. I haven't done a clean install in years. I went from Vista to 7 to 8 on the same setup. Then I replaced the motherboard on the same Windows 8.1 install. Everything's working just fine.
Click to expand...
Oh god that sounds horrible to me, I do a clean install every 6 months, no matter how well the thing is running. Am I mad GAF?
 
S

sfried

Member
JoJo UK said:
Oh god that sounds horrible to me, I do a clean install every 6 months, no matter how well the thing is running. Am I mad GAF?
Click to expand...

I can't afford to clean install. I have so many programs I have painstakingly tweaked and configured to my preference. Not to mention OLD GAMES with patches from God-knows-where I downloaded it from...
 
G

Goldenhen

Member
orochi91 said:
I need some clarification:

Do you mean those that upgrade early will have to pay after a year?

Or do upgraders have a year window to download W10 for free, which they'll have to pay if they miss that one-year window?
Click to expand...

No you keep the license W10 forever if you upgraded within the first year.

After one year, you will have to pay for the license for W10 if you didn't upgrade within the first year.
 
S

Steelyuhas

Member
mastrbiggy said:
lfr5VFG.png
Click to expand...

FsqifIF.png
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
JoJo UK said:
Oh god that sounds horrible to me, I do a clean install every 6 months, no matter how well the thing is running. Am I mad GAF?
Click to expand...

I also switched from AMD to Nvidia back to AMD in the span of 3 weeks. Though that forced me to actually clean up registry entries and vagrant drivers because something broke hard and the screen would just go black when Windows booted.
Makes you wonder how on earth DX12 would ever manage to have crossfire/sli between an Nvidia or AMD gpu, they'd both need drivers that don't try to murder your computer if they're both present.
 
J

JoJo UK

Unconfirmed Member
sfried said:
I can't afford to clean install. I have so many programs I have painstakingly tweaked and configured to my preference. Not to mention OLD GAMES with patches from God-knows-where I downloaded it from...
Click to expand...
In those cases that make total sense to me, when I was a avid PC gamer I would have been the same, now I backup weekly and clean install ever six months. Thinking about it I would only clean install my sons gaming PC if something horrific happened. I do probably have every installation application/ of any program I found useful or game patch I had to manually download and install backed up going back 10 years on one of many external HDs (possibly even CD and DVD backups if I go back far enough).

When upgrading to a new OS version do most people do just that, upgrade? Or do please clean install? The only time an upgrade worked for me with no issues was moving to the Win10 beta surprisingly.
 
S

Seanspeed

Banned
70s Style Pimp said:
OK

I'm not a technical expert and I don't pretend to know how DirectX and graphic card drivers work.

The bottom line for me is:

Should I expect an increase in real world performance from my 980gtx? (my cpu is i5-4690K @4.5ghz)
Click to expand...
For existing games? Probably not so much unless a developer wants to go and rework their game.

For future DX12 games, you're going to benefit and probably not realize it because you wont be able to compare to what it would be like without DX12. You're probably not going to get a DX12 patch where you can see the improvement or anything. It will just be utilizing everything better from the get-go(hopefully).
 
C

c0de

Member
sfried said:
I can't afford to clean install. I have so many programs I have painstakingly tweaked and configured to my preference. Not to mention OLD GAMES with patches from God-knows-where I downloaded it from...
Click to expand...

Ugh, I feel this pain... I ended up buying a new disk to do a clean install to.
 
I

icecold1983

Member
anyone manage to find any write ups or links to the nvidia/amd non VR graphics talks on dx11/12 and ways to exploit their respective architectures?
 
J

jaju123

Banned
GTA V needs this so bad I presume, or Vulkan. I'm all for delaying it another year so we can have epic CPU utilisation ;)
 
C

curb

Banned
gamechanger87 said:
Curb, I'm so sorry. You got rekt haha.

:)
Click to expand...

Mentioned the thread and everything. As I said before when you linked the 2014 article, I stand corrected. They really should get that verified.

Edit: I just want to mention that I'm always suspicious of unverified corporate Twitter accounts. Too much misinformation, parody and fan accounts out there.
 
S

Seanspeed

Banned
So I see a lot of people saying 'Well I'm never going to need to upgrade my older CPU now'. But do we really think CPU bottlenecks are just going to disappear? I mean, I'm sure that DX12 could definitely help retain some relevancy of older CPU's, but unlike Mantle, DX12 should be pretty popular, yea? Which means that developers can push the boundaries of what they were doing with games, knowing that there will be enough people who will be able to take advantage of it. So instead of just doing the same things they were before, just more efficiently, they can do *more* and introduce new sorts of demanding scenarios.

Seems to me there will still be incentive to upgrade.

The Boat said:
I'm sorry if it's been mentioned, but do we know what features are locked to new cards?
Click to expand...
Whatever 'Tier 1 Conservative Rasterization' and 'ROV's' are.
 
T

Turin Turambar

Member
sfried said:
Yeah, but most hardcore PC enthusiasts always say it's best to do a clean install whenever there's a major OS update, even if it's just a Service Pack..
Click to expand...


God no. People who do that are ignorants that act as if a modern OS wasn't any better than freaking Windows 95. Modern windows are solid as hell and MS already test the heck out of upgrading processes.
 
H

Herne

Member
My friend and I are upgrading from an i7 860 and an i5 2500 to an i7 4790K each. I'm hoping the performance improvements will be worth it because looking at numbers, they don't seem like €340 worth of improvement.
 
G

gamechanger87

Member
curb said:
Mentioned the thread and everything. As I said before when you linked the 2014 article, I stand corrected. They really should get that verified.

Edit: I just want to mention that I'm always suspicious of unverified corporate Twitter accounts. Too much misinformation, parody and fan accounts out there.
Click to expand...

Completely understandable and I know that you had corrected yourself previously. Based on the fact that they saw the thread, I wouldn't be surprised to see the DX12 twitter account verified pretty soon.
 
C

curb

Banned
gamechanger87 said:
Completely understandable and I know that you had corrected yourself previously. Based on the fact that they saw the thread, I wouldn't be surprised to see the DX12 twitter account verified pretty soon.
Click to expand...

Probably for the best. Also, I love that they called out "GAF" but really, it was just me :p
 
D

Devildoll

Member
man, i just watched that presentation about dx12

that asteroids demo

30 fps dx11
70 fps dx12 20 % cpu usage
80 fps dx12 40 % cpu usage
90 fps dx12 5% cpu usage

if that is a realistic scene and developers do their job, this is going to be insane!
 
P

Poodlestrike

Banned
Easy_D said:
Hah. I haven't done a clean install in years. I went from Vista to 7 to 8 on the same setup. Then I replaced the motherboard on the same Windows 8.1 install. Everything's working just fine.
Click to expand...

Ugggggh. Gives me the shivers just thinking about that. Clean install, every time.
 
D

dragonelite

Member
Poodlestrike said:
Ugggggh. Gives me the shivers just thinking about that. Clean install, every time.
Click to expand...

This, hope with win10 which Will have a repository i can make clean install script that will download and install software in the right place

Or just dump a clean image on one drive still waiting on my office 365 10tb OneDrive invite :p
 
A

Akronis

Member
Devildoll said:
man, i just watched that presentation about dx12

that asteroids demo

30 fps dx11
70 fps dx12 20 % cpu usage
80 fps dx12 40 % cpu usage
90 fps dx12 5% cpu usage

if that is a realistic scene and developers do their job, this is going to be insane!
Click to expand...

Remember that it's a tech demo and this boost in performance with never fully translate to games.
 
Bruno

Bruno

Member
sfried said:
Yeah, but most hardcore PC enthusiasts always say it's best to do a clean install whenever there's a major OS update, even if it's just a Service Pack. I just don't understand how they can find the time and reinstall everything and retain the same setttings, particularly when it comes to certain programs/games that need particular patches, quirky settings, inf/conf file changes etc.. It's like needing to memorize every single programs fixes/configs.

Yeah, Steam lets you do could sync and stuff but not all games support it, and also there's a boatload of GOG stuff too where you have to go into the forums and read carefully how to make certain games run better for certain setups. Hopefully the Cleanup utility is really robust at removing excess/obsolete registries and also does something to keep your PC lean even after a Service Pack install.
Click to expand...

Don't install games on the same drive as your OS and you wont have these issues for most things.
 
S

sfried

Member
Bruno said:
Don't install games on the same drive as your OS and you wont have these issues for most things.
Click to expand...

I think you missed the part about the endless amount illustration programs and config/registry tweaks, not to mentions as of now I only have one HDD and a couple of other external HDDs.

If you're asking me to invest money on a secondary HDD, I will do that in the long run, but even then, have you ever thought that it requires you reinstalling all your games to that new drive just the same? Unless there's an effective meathod of ghosting drives, I don't see how it could be anything elss than time-consuming and problematic.
Poodlestrike said:
Ugggggh. Gives me the shivers just thinking about that. Clean install, every time.
Click to expand...
And just how the fuck do I reinstall everything with all of its retweaked settings, not to mention all of those long-lost workaround/patches for some of the older games I play, in under an hour?
 
P

Poodlestrike

Banned
sfried said:
I think you missed the part about the endless amount illustration programs and config/registry tweaks, not to mentions as of now I only have one HDD and a couple of other external HDDs.

If you're asking me to invest money on a secondary HDD, I will do that in the long run, but even then, have you ever thought that it requires you reinstalling all your games to that new drive just the same? Unless there's an effective meathod of ghosting drives, I don't see how it could be anything elss than time-consuming and problematic.

And just how the fuck do I reinstall everything with all of its retweaked settings, not to mention all of those long-lost workaround/patches for some of the older games I play, in under an hour?
Click to expand...

You... don't? I mean, I'm aware that it's silly, but I love the feeling of a clean install.
 
S

sfried

Member
Poodlestrike said:
You... don't? I mean, I'm aware that it's silly, but I love the feeling of a clean install.
Click to expand...

Considering I have a ton of downloaded custom brushes on my drawing programs, and the fact that I've invested more than a hundred hours tweaking various programs to make sure they run without any hitches (some even bound to peripherals like my WACOM tablet), no thanks.

IT'ing your computer is pretty time intensive in itself. Trying to clean install everything and lose all the time you've invested making sure everything is running optimally means that I'd have to spend another month or two of retweaking everything before I even begin to get a return of investment for a clean install. And no to mention, all those updates/hotfixes that will come in-between those months after launch, means they you would've just clean installed for naught.

If I ever do a clean install, it will be for a new rig.
 
arhra

arhra

Member
Poodlestrike said:
You... don't? I mean, I'm aware that it's silly, but I love the feeling of a clean install.
Click to expand...

The "feeling of a clean install" is "well shit, now I need to spend forever putting everything back the way it should be before I'm comfortable again".

And you never get everything done properly the first time, as there's always some obscure things you miss because you don't use them every day, so every week or two for the first few months you find yourself having to fix something else that's still not set up right.

As long as you're not installing a bunch of crapware constantly, there's no good reason to go reinstalling windows on a regular basis.
 
G

gamechanger87

Member
Beyond3d getting all crazy on DX12.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GDC/GDC-2015/Better-Power-Better-Performance-Your-Game-on-DirectX12

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GDC/GDC-2015/Solve-the-Tough-Graphics-Problems-with-your-Game-Using-DirectX-Tools

Some images from a presentation on Friday.

wqb9lpo7wb0g5jwwenfc.jpg
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df3499nzomyg2cpvjmpz.jpg
z6ggcd2tc2fqgsz2b8u5.jpg
pjped2hfi6w5b1p0sht2.jpg
t13ihb7j8e9agsoxpy69.jpg
6bunttee3361lygpmo0p.jpg
eyn9mijs4vgkr0vu0xak.jpg
1old29wavuvszuo00r6c.jpg
txc672tnwkxiygcmd0hu.jpg
dsjucltw1niobixj1haw.jpg
qwck3phy9oa9uv5lvahx.jpg
79rku09le87cmedpannr.jpg
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7ugpvyja6t2rlstszevy.jpg
1ozefo7myocihnuiabt6.jpg
uyxxvm123zzpx1o7j3wr.jpg
df0n0dtfqzbygz78y7wh.jpg


Commentary from iRoboto, and there are further discussions later around his bandwidth calcs.

There is no proof yet that X1 is on a completely different Feature Level then PS4 therefore what Shifty writes is correct, if there no difference hardware wise then any difference can be made up by Sony just by developing them, should they choose to. However, this is the part where my agreement begins to diverge; the notion that the API changes will benefit both systems symmetrically.

With the introduction of DX12, it will undoubtedly change the method in which games are programmed; as such bottlenecks on the system are expected to move. Past performance in games will not be good indicators for the future, and past bottlenecks may not be future bottlenecks. DX12 shows a strong movement towards reducing CPU overhead whilst simultaneously increasing GPU efficiency/CU saturation by reducing the amount of time the CUs will stay idle waiting for work to arrive. However GPU efficiency comes at a cost, it is not free, improving GPU efficiency has three additional requirements, the first is increased sustained bandwidth to feed the CUs to do more work, the second is the heat/longevity of the silicon, and lastly the increased power requirement. How PS4 and XO approach these limitations is actually different, as such since their approaches are different they cannot equally gain the same amount. My position is that Xbox One is better designed in these aspects for DX12 than PS4 is, thus has more to gain moving to DX12 than PS4 would. [Please note this does not mean I expect X1 to out perform PS4, but I do believe the gap will shrink]

When looking at available bandwidth, this AMD paper [http://research.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/papers/micro13_hsc.pdf] specifically notes
Page 4: Specifically, for a GPU composed of 32 CUs, we found that 700 GB/s eliminated the memory bandwidth bottleneck for all our workloads.
Doing some math will indicate that @ 853 Mhz at 12 CUs, the required bandwidth to remove the bandwidth bottleneck for CUs will be approximately ~240 GB/s. This happens to be approximately the total complete bandwidth of Xbox One (192 GB/s + 67GB/s). When looking at PS4 we have a max theoretical of 176GB/s, and as such, bandwidth will become a bottleneck for all 18CUs. Math will show that there is only enough bandwidth to fully saturate 9CUs. From a design perspective Xbox One is better built for sustained high bandwidth work, the less idle time the more performance you can obtain from the Xbox. So much so that in it's perfect impossible form it can fully saturate 12CUs vs PS4s 9 CUs. This is not a strong argument to compare performance between the two systems, but this is a strong argument on how their systems are designed for the new API.

The second factor is thermal. The GPU efficiency is bound to increase as idle time for the CUs drop, this also has a side effect of increased thermals. Xbox One reportedly had very loud fans for developer units because they did not have sensors ready so they ran the fans at 100%. To date no game has ever caused the Xbox to exhibit more noise such that it becomes more audible. A simple look at the hardware for Xbox One and we see an ethusiast level cooler for a SoC that requires significantly less power than its PC counterparts.
The Xbox One does use less energy than the PS4 when it's playing games (112 watts versus 137 watts) or streaming videos (74 watts versus 89 watts). Polygon, http://www.nrdc.org/media/2014/140516.asp
The PS4 does not have such a cooler, today is exhibits increased fan noise when playing specific games. The question becomes, how well tested is the hardware for this level of GPU efficiency?
Can it take the heat? Excessive heat and voltage will cause the lifespan of a chip to die, so are the chips ready for 7 years of torture? I'm confident that XBox One can its heatsink cooler cools only the SOC and a majoirty of its bandwidth comes from esram which is centralized on the SOC, I'm not sure if the PS4 can, its bandwidth is off SOC, thus increased pressure will cause RAM to heat up as well (there are no heat sinks on GDDR5 like on PC parts). If you like to overclock you know Prime95, and when running Prime95 if stability is an issue you need to both underclock, increase voltage, or decrease speeds on the bus, on RAM, essentially where ever the weakness exists. In this scenario, I believe once again Xbox One is better designed for the high saturation games we should see coming with DX12.

Lastly the final factor is power. Not only does Xbox One use less power than PS4, but it also has a large dedicated external power brick vs the internal power supply of the PS4. Overtaxed power supplies are a less common cause to crashing in Prime95 but it still can be a factor. There are just very few programs that ever push your chips to 100% but power supplies that are pushed to its limits over sustained periods of time the increase heat in the power supply can cause voltage drops resulting in crashes and general instability. The Xbox One has an external brick with it's own dedicated fan vs PS4 internal with its shared SoC fan. So once again from a power perspective we see that Xbox One is ready for DX12, PS4 is not as prepared.

When we consider these points together, it is clear to me at least that MS has designed the console to be ready for DX12. They knew it was coming, they knew what it would it do to the silicon. All areas of the console have been beefed up to prepare for it and these design choices reflect that DX12 was meant to be the endstate for Xbox One; ultimately we should see performance of the console improve greatly as engines move towards DX12 based design. For PS4, I don't see a console that is ready for the additional burden. Sony could choose to implement all the features found in DX12 but they must determine whether or not the hardware is suited for it, for the remaining lifespan of the console. Will their units begin to fail because the way newer games are designed. If so, then the way to control it is to not allow full access to these features, optimize the API only as much as their console can take. The newer games will still drive PS4 to its limits, but the limits of what Sony wants (whatever that may be).

edit: tl;dr; You can't put something into the SDK and then later take it out at another date. If they had never designed the console with this particular level of stress in mind, then they need to be very thorough on testing on what to enable. Sony doesn't want to be in a situation where all the Gen 1 consoles start dying by year 4-5. This isn't applicable to Xbox One however. They are fully aligned for this, and have stress tested accordingly.
Click to expand...
 
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