AMD Appears To Have Power-Saving 'Dynamic Frame Rate Control' Feature Incoming

[renz496]

This is the most useless feature I heard of. Least thing I would do is to limit game to 60FPS just so I can save some useless power WTF is wrong with this world. No I want my game to run 15000000FPS if it's able to push it, because gaming on 30FPS is impossible, 60FPS sort of sucks 60FPS + awesome. My suggestion is to disable any type of power saving including useless junk called ULPS.

If you have a 60Hz monitor, having the game render output 150 times per second is pointless and is a waste of resources.

tell that to CS player that insisting of having 300FPS regardless of monitor they use

 

[Novuake]

This is the most useless feature I heard of. Least thing I would do is to limit game to 60FPS just so I can save some useless power WTF is wrong with this world. No I want my game to run 15000000FPS if it's able to push it, because gaming on 30FPS is impossible, 60FPS sort of sucks 60FPS + awesome. My suggestion is to disable any type of power saving including useless junk called ULPS.

If you have a 60Hz monitor, having the game render output 150 times per second is pointless and is a waste of resources.

tell that to CS players that insisting of having 300FPS regardless of monitor they use

Fixed it for you. CS players are all the same when it comes to rediculous FPS number. Mass delusion.

 

[Vlad Rose]

This is the most useless feature I heard of. Least thing I would do is to limit game to 60FPS just so I can save some useless power WTF is wrong with this world. No I want my game to run 15000000FPS if it's able to push it, because gaming on 30FPS is impossible, 60FPS sort of sucks 60FPS + awesome. My suggestion is to disable any type of power saving including useless junk called ULPS.

If you have a 60Hz monitor, having the game render output 150 times per second is pointless and is a waste of resources.

tell that to CS players that insisting of having 300FPS regardless of monitor they use

Fixed it for you. CS players are all the same when it comes to rediculous FPS number. Mass delusion.

I agree. All these things like 300fps, super high mouse dpi, and super low keyboard latency response are all just marketing gimmicks at that point that sucker delusional gamers into spending money on something that doesn't help at all in real world usage.

 

[-Lone-]

Yeah, 60 fps is enough for me at 4k, as long as it doesn't lag, why waste the energy

 

[renz496]

This is the most useless feature I heard of. Least thing I would do is to limit game to 60FPS just so I can save some useless power WTF is wrong with this world. No I want my game to run 15000000FPS if it's able to push it, because gaming on 30FPS is impossible, 60FPS sort of sucks 60FPS + awesome. My suggestion is to disable any type of power saving including useless junk called ULPS.

If you have a 60Hz monitor, having the game render output 150 times per second is pointless and is a waste of resources.

tell that to CS players that insisting of having 300FPS regardless of monitor they use

Fixed it for you. CS players are all the same when it comes to rediculous FPS number. Mass delusion.

all i know it has something to do with the game engine weird behavior on very high FPS. you can consider it was some kind of exploit that some player use to 'cheat' on multiplayer or LAN session. but i don't know if latest version of CS engine still have that exploit. i'm sure it is not legal in actual match either.

 

[Vlad Rose]

I could see that possibly. If the engine is coded poorly it probably gives a speed hack of some sort if it knocks the packets off sync.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Seems i am the only one that finds this completely pointless? I understand its different from a frame rate cap (you can already get utilities that do this), but i don't think the power savings will be all that much different, certainly not enough to make any kind of difference to your power bill. I suspect on the fly scaling of frequency and voltage rather than a frame rate cap will just add stutter and increased frame latency. Rather than AMD adding nifty features that i wont use I'd prefer them to just further optimize the drivers for performance.

 

[17seconds]

Seems i am the only one that finds this completely pointless? I understand its different from a frame rate cap (you can already get utilities that do this), but i don't think the power savings will be all that much different, certainly not enough to make any kind of difference to your power bill. I suspect on the fly scaling of frequency and voltage rather than a frame rate cap will just add stutter and increased frame latency. Rather than AMD adding nifty features that i wont use I'd prefer them to just further optimize the drivers for performance.

Maybe I'm missing something, how is it different from a frame rate cap?

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Seems i am the only one that finds this completely pointless? I understand its different from a frame rate cap (you can already get utilities that do this), but i don't think the power savings will be all that much different, certainly not enough to make any kind of difference to your power bill. I suspect on the fly scaling of frequency and voltage rather than a frame rate cap will just add stutter and increased frame latency. Rather than AMD adding nifty features that i wont use I'd prefer them to just further optimize the drivers for performance.

Maybe I'm missing something, how is it different from a frame rate cap?

By the sound of the article they will scale clock speed of the gpu down with an fps target/limit, so the limit will actually be in place by the speed of the gpu, where a fps cap doesn't change the clock speed of the gpu. saving you a couple watts of power over a normal fps cap.....but i suspect the dynamic clock speed changes will negatively affect frame latency, because its making your gpu slower, compared to an fps cap which actually improves frame latency if your always hitting the capped limit.
http://www.radeonpro.info/features/dynamic-frame-rate-control/
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18499549

 

[alextheblue]

By the sound of the article they will scale clock speed of the gpu down with an fps target/limit, so the limit will actually be in place by the speed of the gpu, where a fps cap doesn't change the clock speed of the gpu. saving you a couple watts of power over a normal fps cap.....

From what they're saying it's going to save quite a bit more than "a couple watts" in cases where you really have excess power. As far as how it works, it's just another target for PowerTune. Before you had thermal and power targets, now they've added a FPS target. So it will be able to adjust clockspeed REALLY fast. It will be very fine grained too on their latest hardware.

Anyway, yeah if you want an idea of how this works look into powertune and imagine that applied to a target FPS. Interesting stuff, and yeah it's more useful for mobile devices.

 

[renz496]

Seems i am the only one that finds this completely pointless? I understand its different from a frame rate cap (you can already get utilities that do this), but i don't think the power savings will be all that much different, certainly not enough to make any kind of difference to your power bill. I suspect on the fly scaling of frequency and voltage rather than a frame rate cap will just add stutter and increased frame latency. Rather than AMD adding nifty features that i wont use I'd prefer them to just further optimize the drivers for performance.

some said that it might not affect dekstop GPU much but it might be useful in laptops. maybe this will be AMD answer to nvidia battery boost?

 

[Reepca]

"And thats of cource ignoring additional screen tearing. If you are rendering 150 fps when you can only display 60, you are going to have 2-3 tears per frame. Instead of 0 tears. Means it will look worse, with absolutely no benefit." (How am I supposed to quote stuff on the article page comments section? Clicking the quote button appears to do nothing... it's straightforward enough in the forums, but makes no sense here).

One would hope that triple buffering would be standard in games these days. I can't understand why it isn't in every game by now, since it completely eliminates tearing.

And in theory there can be *some* benefit. Even if your display is stuck at 60 FPS, more game-refreshes per second means that what the display *does* display eventually will be more up-to-date than it otherwise would be. The same can be said about playing games at 60 FPS on 120Hz monitors.

But more importantly, if you look beyond today's 60 and 120 fps standards, eventually there *will* come a point where it's meaningless to get more updates. Even if 60fps seems "low" (a foreign concept to me, I might add) today, this technology can be applied to keep the graphics cards of the future from running today's games at 2000 FPS when only 500 is needed (haha... it's the future, its purpose is to use wild numbers).

 

[iam2thecrowe]

(How am I supposed to quote stuff on the article page comments section? Clicking the quote button appears to do nothing... it's straightforward enough in the forums, but makes no sense here).

it does appear to do nothing. until you click "add comment" after you have clicked the quote button, and then whatever you quoted appears in there. Its silly, i know.

 

[Jure Slegel]

I am using this feature for qite some time with radeon pro especialy it is great for crossfire setups. It smoothens gameplay and stutering issue.

 

[Jure Slegel]

One more thing more fps let say 90fps using on 60hz screen it is not the point you will actualy se the fps you will get beter resposivnes from 90fps that 60fps.

The main problem is fluctuation lets say i have strong cf setup. My gpus can handle 150fps then get botleneck by cpu at 80fps at some situations you adapt to the game set your Dynamic Frame Rate Control to 80fps this is lets say minimum fps you getting at the game and the gameplay will be silky smooth gpus will use less power win win situation. No heavy fps fluctuation causing diferent responsivnes causing less smoother experience. It is great feature using vsynick or not.

 

[Danra]

Why would you think this would be released with last week's Catalyst Omega driver?
If this feature is not ready I would rather wait until it is.

 

[Danra]

By the way, limiting FPS to 60 in the Catalyst vs in-game can be a hassle, Microsoft FSX remains an unfriendly beast as it is still looking for 8 GHz CPUs forcing many to use 30 FPS - or lower.

 

[Danra]

By the way, limiting FPS to 60 in the Catalyst vs in-game can be a hassle, Microsoft FSX remains an unfriendly beast as it is still looking for 8 GHz CPUs forcing many to use 30 FPS - or lower.

 

[mordorrson]

Am I the only one wondering if this might also make stuttering a thing of the past, or at least much less prominent?

 

[Novuake]

Am I the only one wondering if this might also make stuttering a thing of the past, or at least much less prominent?

I doubt it, but I had the same thought when I read the title.

 

[bukskin]

look like it good feature for radeon card, but please leave us choose fps lock, it would be nice for power saving options for us