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

[N.Broekhuijsen]

Looks like we'll soon be seeing a new power saving feature from AMD.

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

 

[-Lone-]

Is it going to work with all AMD GPUs?

 

[tomfreak]

FINALLY they listened! an "Nvidia" equivalent(not exactly, may be better) of adaptive Vsync

I have been asking for this RadeonPro feature via from FB, to forum AMD representatives with no luck from replies. I was going to give up AMD to Nvidia.

Thank god this news come b4 I switch. I hope this news is real or I am going to switch to Nvidia.

 

[-Lone-]

Yeah, would be nice if I can take a couple hundred watts off of my 295x2, lol.

 

[dimar]

Cool. Just don't lock it to 60 FPS. Let users choose the FPS lock.

 

[MaCk0y]

Is this the same as limiting the frame rate using MSI afterburner, Dxtory or RadeonPro ?

 

[Vlad Rose]

I'm surprised that this hasn't been done a long time ago.

BTW, this is nothing like Nvidia's adaptive Vsync as it doesn't automatically adjust the clock rates of the card based on frame rate like this AMD driver does.

 

[AJSB]

tomfreak,
This have nothing to do with Adaptive VSync.

dimar,
Yeah, i also expect this feature not be only for GCN cards.

This feature is VERY interesting helping saving a lot of energy, reding noise, reduce overall temperatures of the system,etc. I'm very pleased with this feature, hope it works well.

 

[David Dewis]

At last. This is brilliant. I know most games have this feature built in now, but still for those that don't, this is good news.

 

[Bondfc11]

Or get a 980 and already save a ton of energy over an AMD.

Heh - flame war ignite!

 

[red77star]

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.

 

[fkr]

i have always set a FPS limit of around 10 fps above my refresh rate using afterburner.

it really helps helps when switching between differant types of games and keep my setup nice and quiet

 

[silverblue]

Bondfc11 - it would be telling to see how much AMD's solution reduces power usage. I can't see how that wouldn't make a 290X, for example, much more desirable. Just pushing clocks a little higher can cause an exponential increase in power consumption and hence noise and heat, so if it's not necessary, why stress the card, PSU and CPU?

red77star - if you pay the power bill and/or have a monitor that cannot output super high frame rates, IF an intelligent power saving solution exists then shouldn't it at least be an option? 30fps isn't a problem for slower paced games anyway.

I will say that a framerate limiter would make weaker CPUs more desireable. In conjunction with Mantle, it could be very interesting.

 

[cmi86]

I lock all my games at 60 FPS anyways. I cannot understand for the life of me why people insist on flogging their GPU to death to make 150 useless screen torn to hell FPS on a 60Hz monitor... My GPU is usually sitting around 50% and 55-60c during gaming at 60 FPS.

 

[none12345]

"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. "

You clearly dont understand the point. If you run a gpu flat out with crank out for example 150 fps when you can only display 60. Then you arent just wasting power. You are unnecessarily heating up your GPU. Who cares right? Well that means you are throttling your GPU. Again who cares if you now only get 120 under throttle conditions instead of 150, you can still only display 60. However what if you enter an area with more complexity and your gpu starts dropping down to 50 fps in some spots. If you didn't unnecessarily cause the care to throttle, you would probably get 60 fps.

Its not just about power, it can help performance as well. Why overheat a GPU when you get no benefit from it, you only rob performance when you do need it.

 

[none12345]

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.

And you are shortening the life of your hardware. Tho most people will probably replace the card before it wears out, its still a potential concern.

Saving power is just a nice little side effect of better performance.

 

[Hunter_Killers]

Regardless if you have a 60Hz monitor. Higher FPS means smoother control. So hopefully it's a slider.

 

[Ryguy64]

I imagine this would be pretty useful for laptops with AMD GPUs. Might get a few more minutes when doing portable gaming.

 

[drocdoc]

now if only we can get a new interface for "ccc"

 

[DecafTable]

This is welcome news. Although AMD is a bit late to the game. I've been using RadeonPro and/or MSI Afterburner w/Rivera to limit my frames and monitor temps for quite sometime...not only that but there's a plethora of other options surprisingly absent from CCC.

Omega was a great driver update and I have been enjoying their new additions. I hope AMD listens to the community and takes notice of what other ideas people have pioneered to supplement their great drivers!

 

[Kewlx25]

My understanding of triple buffering and vsync is the GPU and CPU still attempt to render the scene at full speed. If you don't triple buffer, you're going to have issues if your internal FPS drops below the screen refresh rate. Lots of micro stutter and low fps.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

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.

 

[alextheblue]

At last. This is brilliant. I know most games have this feature built in now, but still for those that don't, this is good news.

Many games have a FPS cap but this isn't a simple FPS cap. This actually reduces the clocks of the GPU to hit target framerate. So there should still be a large power gap between a plain FPS cap and this dynamic frame rate control (which is tied into their existing fine-grained powertune).

Same with other third-party FPS caps. If they don't adjust the frequency of the GPU dynamically in the drivers (they don't) then there's still a lot of power to be saved. So yes, this actually IS new, as "current implementations" don't actually implement fine-grained dynamic clock adjustments.

 

[Novuake]

You get SOME of the power saving with normal V-sync or frame limiting.

BUT is this going to suffer the same rubber banding that I get with AMD cards when frame limiting is used?

Example :
60FPS when nothing is going on and then suddenly something happens and the FPS dips to under 50FPS and quickly recovers. Because the GPU would need to compensate UNBELIEVABLY fast to avoid this being noticeable and to not cause stutter.

 

[17seconds]

Its a frame-rate limiter, nothing new for users of Afterburner, Radeon Pro, PrecisionX, etc. Its main value will be for gaming laptop users who need to save on their battery consumption. In fact, Nvidia already has it available for its mobile platform under the name Battery Boost.

Guru3d has a little more info:
"Handy for gaming laptops, otherwise less interesting for desktop users"
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-to-add-dynamic-frame-rate-control.html