Dual-GPU Battle: Does Frame Pacing In Catalyst 13.8 Turn The Tide?

[cleeve]

We take AMD's Catalyst 13.8 beta driver for a spin to see if its frame pacing feature fixes CrossFire's dropped and runt frame issues. Follow along as we compare the Radeon HD 7990 to Nvidia's GeForce GTX 690 in seven popular titles, with video to match!

Dual-GPU Battle: Does Frame Pacing In Catalyst 13.8 Turn The Tide? : Read more

 

[jimmysmitty]

The drivers do seem to make the FPS much smoother overall. BF3 is a good example with the game dropping then jumping and so on but 13.8 made it a much smoother line.

Its good to see that work is being done to make it more competitive but I fear that its almost pointless since Hawaii XT is on its way and will be a better option in CFX.

Also Laras hair on the GTX690 was funny. Just fluttering around like crazy. I guess TressFX does make a difference after all.

 

[jase240]

This is great, AMD is finally getting on par for dual GPU config with Nvidia!!
This might make 2 AMD cards a way better value than Nvidia!!

 

[slicedtoad]

awesome, I'm glad they got around to addressing that indiscrepancy.

 

[viewgamer]

The Metro Last Light benchmark is a modern example of the way Nvidia handles its business.
These strong arm tactics to eliminate the competition aren't beneficial to anyone, Nvidia's less than pleasant business practices is why I try to support AMD whenever possible.

 

[viewgamer]

The Metro Last Light benchmark is a modern example of the way Nvidia handles its business.
These strong arm tactics to eliminate the competition aren't beneficial to anyone, Nvidia's less than pleasant business practices is why I try to support AMD whenever possible.

 

[Emma Long]

Apart from Metro the 7990 tied the 690 on two occasions and beat it in the rest, that's very encouraging from the red team.
The situation with Metro last light seems peculiar to me, we've seen things like this before with Nvidia sponsored titles & I thought the industry was passed this sort of thing.
Nvidia can compete, it has proven so time and time again, which makes this all the more reprehensible.
I would like to see an Nvidia that competes on the basis of performance & features not strong-arming developers.

Back to the 7990, so overall it's faster than the 690 and significantly less expensive, at $700 the 7990 puts very serious pressure on the 780 so I'd like to see the 780 added into the benchmarking mix as well.

 

[CarlitoBanderas]

What's the point of a 690 ? in 1080o & 1440p it's slower than the 7990, in 4K & multi monitor it doesn't have enough memory & it's 300 bucks more expensive.
Nvidia needs to bring out a 790 asap, the 690 is not competitive anymore.

 

[m32]

I've enjoyed this article, Toms. We've seen the flaws and now some improvements with the 7990.

 

[_zxzxzx_]

AMD deserves a pat on the back for working hard on improving their drivers

 

[aggroboy]

[quotemsg=11476339,0,1407375]What's the point of a 690 ? in 1080o & 1440p it's slower than the 7990, in 4K & multi monitor it doesn't have enough memory & it's 300 bucks more expensive.
Nvidia needs to bring out a 790 asap, the 690 is not competitive anymore.[/quotemsg]
Enthusiast mindshare is still dominated by the GTX Titan, so Nvidia can afford to stand pat.

 

[tomfreak]

base on the side by side youtube video, for some games I am having a hard time telling the diff between 3 setups. And all the video are in slowmotion, I need to really focus on the video to actually see the diff.

If I am really playing the game, honestly I WILL not able to tell the diff lol.

Frame pacing is a bonus welcome move, but getting the second card work flawlessly is still probably the main priority.

I would much prefer Tomshardware to test multiple single GPU cards in SLI/crossfire than using 690/7990.(tho it is the same but multiple single GPU is much bigger market than dualGPUs) then after that throw in the triple card setup and compare the frame pacing vs dual card setup.

 

[JJ1217]

Little bit weird about that Metro issue. Have you tried updating Metro? AMD cards even in single card configurations had this issue, when the game first came out, but it turned out it was a game issue. Kind of weird to be honest.

 

[thartist]

Yeah well, 13.8 beta2 are already available so that makes the article insta-old, doesn't it?
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-8WINBetaDriver.aspx

 

[iam2thecrowe]

[quotemsg=11476243,0,905876]The Metro Last Light benchmark is a modern example of the way Nvidia handles its business.
These strong arm tactics to eliminate the competition aren't beneficial to anyone, Nvidia's less than pleasant business practices is why I try to support AMD whenever possible.[/quotemsg]

are you sure its not just that AMD drivers are often problematic, and you should support the green team because their solution has far less issues? which is what you should want as a consumer, it's not about loyalty to one company or the other.
AMD has their own "strong arm tactics" as you describe to benefit their own solutions to make their products appealing in some situations. I was tricked by this as an ex-crossfire owner.......i expected more performance but instead got stuttering......
Nvidia are able to back their solutions by delivering real world performance as expected by the consumer, AMD does not.....
I will not support AMD or Nvidia wherever possible as for some reason you do, i just buy the best solution for needs. I owe these companies nothing.

 

[th123]

Wow, tom's really has the hate on for AMD in the last year

 

[cRACKmONKEY421]

Good article! Hard to tell the difference in the videos, but I'd say nVidia has the slight edge overall still. Not a $300 for less memory edge, so I'd say AMD is the better buy here.

What's with all the talking about tomorrows article though? Sounds like you've got the info about gamer experience. I want that

Sometimes it's hard to see the difference in frames and movement, but it's always easy to feel them. I game @ 120Hz&FPS, and 1000Hz mouse. It's hard to justify those rates on paper or to see a difference in the higher rates as a spectator, but they're instantly noticeable when playing. Not sure why everyone got the "60Hz is fine" mentality. While staring at a black monitor, it's possible to identify an object that appears as a flicker on the screen for less than a 200th of a second. Just one random example. Even if our eyeballs had a 60 FPS cap, they don't support v-sync yet. Now I'm just ranting hahah

 

[viewgamer]

[quotemsg=11476688,0,388413][quotemsg=11476243,0,905876]The Metro Last Light benchmark is a modern example of the way Nvidia handles its business.
These strong arm tactics to eliminate the competition aren't beneficial to anyone, Nvidia's less than pleasant business practices is why I try to support AMD whenever possible.[/quotemsg]

are you sure its not just that AMD drivers are often problematic, and you should support the green team because their solution has far less issues? which is what you should want as a consumer, it's not about loyalty to one company or the other.
AMD has their own "strong arm tactics" as you describe to benefit their own solutions to make their products appealing in some situations. I was tricked by this as an ex-crossfire owner.......i expected more performance but instead got stuttering......
Nvidia are able to back their solutions by delivering real world performance as expected by the consumer, AMD does not.....
I will not support AMD or Nvidia wherever possible as for some reason you do, i just buy the best solution for needs. I owe these companies nothing.[/quotemsg]
AMD does not use any kind of strong-armed tactics, in fact it's against their internal code of conduct, all the evidence for Nvidia's strong-armed tactics is well documented during the geforce 6000, 7000, 200, 400, 500 & now we are seeing it again.
A few examples are the 3DMark benchmark scandel, & in he early 2000s where Nvidia strong-armed the developers into not supporting ATi's far superior anti aliasing implementation in-games.

Nvidia in fact does not offer less problematic solutions, as evidenced by the catastrophe that is the 312.08 drivers that killed cards.
I have no loyalty to any company, but I refuse to support any company that harms the customer, Nvidia continually does things to harm AMD customers, if you call that better driver support then you have bought Nvidia's PR.
I bet you've never owned a crossfirex setup, AMD did in fact have a stutter free experience through their RadeonPro software, the software is in fact developed by indepednent fans but all of its features were implemented with the help of AMD engineers.
Where do you think Nvidia got Adaptive V-Sync from ? it was stolen from RadeonPro, AMD users had access to dynamic V-Sync for over 4 years.

The only reason people like you buy Nvidia cards is because they feel elitist by doing so, they feel like the big green bully is their friend & when that big green bully starts beating up on the small red folk you stand and applaud, disgusting.

 

[TotallyHeroes]

So AMD does in fact have the fastest graphics card in the world.
AMD's marketing is shit Nvidia's is much better.
Marketing is what sells the product, actual performance doesn't matter much.

 

[Justin Pinotti]

[quotemsg=11476764,0,905876]
AMD does not use any kind of strong-armed tactics, in fact it's against their internal code of conduct, all the evidence for Nvidia's strong-armed tactics is well documented during the geforce 6000, 7000, 200, 400, 500 & now we are seeing it again.
A few examples are the 3DMark benchmark scandel, & in he early 2000s where Nvidia strong-armed the developers into not supporting ATi's far superior anti aliasing implementation in-games.

Nvidia in fact does not offer less problematic solutions, as evidenced by the catastrophe that is the 312.08 drivers that killed cards.
I have no loyalty to any company, but I refuse to support any company that harms the customer, Nvidia continually does things to harm AMD customers, if you call that better driver support then you have bought Nvidia's PR.
I bet you've never owned a crossfirex setup, AMD did in fact have a stutter free experience through their RadeonPro software, the software is in fact developed by indepednent fans but all of its features were implemented with the help of AMD engineers.
Where do you think Nvidia got Adaptive V-Sync from ? it was stolen from RadeonPro, AMD users had access to dynamic V-Sync for over 4 years.

The only reason people like you buy Nvidia cards is because they feel elitist by doing so, they feel like the big green bully is their friend & when that big green bully starts beating up on the small red folk you stand and applaud, disgusting.[/quotemsg]

and lets not forget the fact that nVidia recently payed off ubisoft to optimize their games for nVidia GPUs... obviously nVidia is scared of the fact that both the PS4 and Xbone are full AMD machines, simply meaning most future ports will be better optimized for AMD machines.

 

[qlum]

While it is hard to benchmark the game properly Planetside 2 is a game where framerate clearly doesn't tell the whole story, You can hit an average framerate of 50 in big battles yet still have plenty of drops bellow 20 just for a very short while, short enough not to register on the minimum framerate but big and often enough to really make it all feel very laggy. Shame you can't really benchmark it well as its also one of the few games that can be extremely cpu hungry at some points.

 

[spentshells]

Lara's hair isn't a bug....AMD TressFX Hair tech

 

[iam2thecrowe]

[quotemsg=11476764,0,905876]

AMD does not use any kind of strong-armed tactics, in fact it's against their internal code of conduct, all the evidence for Nvidia's strong-armed tactics is well documented during the geforce 6000, 7000, 200, 400, 500 & now we are seeing it again.
A few examples are the 3DMark benchmark scandel, & in he early 2000s where Nvidia strong-armed the developers into not supporting ATi's far superior anti aliasing implementation in-games.

Nvidia in fact does not offer less problematic solutions, as evidenced by the catastrophe that is the 312.08 drivers that killed cards.
I have no loyalty to any company, but I refuse to support any company that harms the customer, Nvidia continually does things to harm AMD customers, if you call that better driver support then you have bought Nvidia's PR.
I bet you've never owned a crossfirex setup, AMD did in fact have a stutter free experience through their RadeonPro software, the software is in fact developed by indepednent fans but all of its features were implemented with the help of AMD engineers.
Where do you think Nvidia got Adaptive V-Sync from ? it was stolen from RadeonPro, AMD users had access to dynamic V-Sync for over 4 years.

The only reason people like you buy Nvidia cards is because they feel elitist by doing so, they feel like the big green bully is their friend & when that big green bully starts beating up on the small red folk you stand and applaud, disgusting.[/quotemsg]

ok, for starters, nvidia drivers didnt kill cards, it was overclocking and furmark that killed them, the drivers worked fine.

you bet i havnt owned crossfire? I owned crossfire 6850's (after owning a single 6850 for some time before i aquired the second card), after hearing all the raving about how they scale so well and how microstuttering was a thing of the past.... I have used amd/ati for a long time, amongst some nvidia cards, dating back to ATI radeon 8500 and nvidia riva 128. I have had my fair share of experience with both companies. I have had no real issues with either until crossfire.
Radeonpro does not fix the problems, it covers them up with framerate limiters, which do what they say, limit your framerate...... which defies the point of having 2 cards to increase your framerate. not a solution! When your talking about something being disgusting, you should be talking about how AMD/ATI have had this crossfire problem since the beginning and are only now actually trying to fix it. I will have no problem buying their future cards if they do fix this properly. until then, no thanks. In my time i owned a single 6850, 9800pro and 8500 from AMD/ATI, they were fine, i suffered none of the "strong arm tactics" you claim, all games ran fine, even the NVTWIMTBP titles. Stop being a fanboy, judge companies for the quality of the products they produce. i have no issue buying an AMD product if it is superior in it's price segment and its application. Unfortunately AMD fall's short in dual card configs for gaming at this point in time. No amount of fanboyism will change that.

 

[bustapr]

[quotemsg=11477187,0,53571]Lara's hair isn't a bug....AMD TressFX Hair tech [/quotemsg]

thats not what they meant. laras hair on the nvidia card was very buggy as seen in the video.

 

[spentshells]

[quotemsg=11477641,0,212367][quotemsg=11477187,0,53571]Lara's hair isn't a bug....AMD TressFX Hair tech [/quotemsg]

thats not what they meant. laras hair on the nvidia card was very buggy as seen in the video. [/quotemsg]

yes because it can not complete that effect.