News Moore Threads MTT S80 GPU Escapes China, Gets Benchmarked

[Admin]

The Moore Threads MTT S80 GPU has been through some extensive testing by a Japanese tech site in games that we are familiar with. It's... not good.

Moore Threads MTT S80 GPU Escapes China, Gets Benchmarked : Read more

 

[InvalidError]

While drivers are almost certainly a large part of the issue, it is also likely that the hardware itself has bottlenecks regarding how information gets shuffled around between SMs and other function blocks in typical gaming vs AI and GPGPU workloads.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

What most TECH sites do not understand is that the MTT S80 is STILL a product under development phase, no matter what the company claims or advertises. They made a mistake by marketing this card in such an early stage of development, or sort of a beta state.

MTT S80's drivers do not cover all DirectX functions, and calling some functions will cause a problem or become a bottleneck. MOST importantly, the "Chunxiao" architecture itself has many issues which the team is still trying to fix in the FINAL silicon.

The card also requires a compatible MOBO to function properly.

So it's too early to jump on any conclusion. And as the results show, while the basic performance of the Pixel/Vertex Shader seems satisfactory, the GPU fails in actually drawing complex graphics.

For example, in Assetto Corsa game, the GPU rendering process seems to be a strong bottleneck here, while other game have poor rendering issues (Rainbow Six Siege (DX11)," "Apex Legends," and "The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim Special Edition").

Also, Chunxiao architecture platform lacks proper support for DX12, Vulkan or OpenGL programming interfaces, which severely holds this arch back, hence that's why the S80 only matches the performance of the GTX 1050 Ti ! Which is very less by today's standard.

There were also instances where the card did not even run some games due to API and software compatibility issues. Given all these issues, the MTT S80 graphics card may not be that good of a side option even for the Chinese/ASIAN market.

MTT seriously needs to focus more on drivers, firmware and software to get full benefits from the S70/S80.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

What most TECH sites do not understand is that the MTT S80 is STILL a product under development phase, no matter what the company claims or advertises. They made a mistake by marketing this card in such an early stage of development, or sort of a beta state.

MTT S80's drivers do not cover all DirectX functions, and calling some functions will cause a problem or become a bottleneck. MOST importantly, the "Chunxiao" architecture itself has many issues which the team is still trying to fix in the FINAL silicon.

The card also requires a compatible MOBO to function properly.

So it's too early to jump on any conclusion. And as the results show, while the basic performance of the Pixel/Vertex Shader seems satisfactory, the GPU fails in actually drawing complex graphics.

For example, in Assetto Corsa game, the GPU rendering process seems to be a strong bottleneck here, while other game have poor rendering issues (Rainbow Six Siege (DX11)," "Apex Legends," and "The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim Special Edition").

Also, Chunxiao architecture platform lacks proper support for DX12, Vulkan or OpenGL programming interfaces, which severely holds this arch back, hence that's why the S80 only matches the performance of the GTX 1050 Ti ! Which is very less by today's standard.

There were also instances where the card did not even run some games due to API and software compatibility issues. Given all these issues, the MTT S80 graphics card may not be that good of a side option even for the Chinese/ASIAN market.

MTT seriously needs to focus more on drivers, firmware and software to get full benefits from the S70/S80.

We at Tom's Hardware fully understand that the card isn't really ready or done. The real question is whether it will ever be ready for public consumption. In many ways, it's harder to make functional hardware in the first place, and if you have good hardware the drivers are less problematic. If the hardware isn't properly functional, on the other hand, drivers can only go so far in working around the problems.

On some level, this almost feels like Moore Threads took some generic compute-focused cores and they're now trying to back-engineer drivers to make those compute cores do graphics work. And if the cores don't support half of the base functions needed for DX11/DX12, things can get messy in the software.

Basically, building the full architecture for a modern GPU that can provide 10+ teraflops of FP32 is hard. Because to actually hit the proposed teraflops, you need the memory controllers and everything else to be designed properly and work well. The MTT S80 has probably been a great learning process, and maybe a future architecture will do a lot better, but I'm skeptical the current design will ever reach even half of its theoretical potential.

 

[sivaseemakurthi]

Is the architecture really based on powervr GPUs? I wonder why take so much trouble to hide that info.

 

[bit_user]

Is the architecture really based on powervr GPUs? I wonder why take so much trouble to hide that info.

Given that this card is only marketed and sold within China, it could be for the sake of that market. Maybe they think more consumers will opt for their lower-performing card out of a sense of patriotic duty, if they believe it was entirely designed in China.

 

[bit_user]

What most TECH sites do not understand is that the MTT S80 is STILL a product under development phase, no matter what the company claims or advertises. They made a mistake by marketing this card in such an early stage of development, or sort of a beta state.

Are you saying that it's not available in Chinese retail stores? I thought it had been shipping for months.

MTT S80's drivers do not cover all DirectX functions, and calling some functions will cause a problem or become a bottleneck.

You'd think there should be some game they can point to as one which is fully-supported. Have they said as much?

The card also requires a compatible MOBO to function properly.

Any idea why? Is it for ReBar support?

that's why the S80 only matches the performance of the GTX 1050 Ti !

The benchmarks in the article show the GTX 1050 Ti drawing circles around the S80. The best case was Payday 2 (DX9), where the S80 managed almost 70% of the 1050 Ti's performance, but while using 2.7 times as much power!

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Are you saying that it's not available in Chinese retail stores? I thought it had been shipping for months.


You'd think there should be some game they can point to as one which is fully-supported. Have they said as much?


Any idea why? Is it for ReBar support?


The benchmarks in the article show the GTX 1050 Ti drawing circles around the S80. The best case was Payday 2 (DX9), where the S80 managed almost 70% of the 1050 Ti's performance, but while using 2.7 times as much power!

I think this article hit a nerve 😆
If this thing can't even run CS and Rainbow Six Siege , it belongs in the bin.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

Are you saying that it's not available in Chinese retail stores? I thought it had been shipping for months.

Not yet on a full scale, only few stores had it actually, but the majority of samples sold were given to testers/reviewers. Gamers haven't bought this yet due to obvious reasons like lack of proper API and gaming support. Some Cyber Cafes had it installed, but that also didn't go as expected.

The card also had a retail price of around $300 US in the Chinese domestic market so it seems unlikely that it will sell that well considering the GT 1030 consumes lower power and can be found for lower than $100 US in the same region in abundance.

Furthermore, MTT S80 does not support the latest Windows version/build, and many of the modern games. This card is currently restricted to DX9 games, and it doesn’t even support tessellation, and Shader Model 5.

You'd think there should be some game they can point to as one which is fully-supported. Have they said as much?

Not sure about this. But I think CS:GO, League of Legends,, and KartRider.

On their website they do have a lot of games listed as compatible, but as far as I know only DX9 games are BEST supported by this architecture. Even in some reviews DX9 titles showed much better performance than DX10/11 games.

Any idea why? Is it for ReBar support?

Yes, actually it is ReBAR, IMO, and also because part of PCI Express Gen5 support on this GPU. The S80 has a list of hardware restrictions, as it only works with certain motherboards and monitors.

Officially, the card only supports CPUs newer than Intel’s 10th Gen and AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series. Here is the list of ALL supported mobos as of now.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

GAMING aside, the card is more suited for AI and inferencing/training.

With the full-featured MUSA architecture and using the MUSA software stack, developers can easily and quickly migrate existing AI models to MTT S80.

MTT S80 is also compatible with PyTorch, and a variety of other mainstream deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, and can optimize dozens of AI models such as Transformer, CNN, and RNN.

In some tests the GPU exhibited a very strong single-precision floating-point performance. MTT S80, for example, is specially adapted to MONAI, an AI open source framework in the MEDICAL field, to achieve high-precision reasoning for a variety of tasks. I presume they will mostly use this card in this domestic field.

Just in case anyone didn't know, the “CUDA on MUSA” is the most important technology developed by MTT.

MTT has created a CUDA ON MUSA compatible solution for CUDA language users in order to reduce migration costs. Using Moore Thread’s porting tool, the CUDA source code can be run on the Moore Threads MUSA architecture GPU in just two steps: compiling and running.

Some close-up GPU pics. Not mine, but taken from a testing done in the lab by an UNIXCLOUD employee. Taken permission to publish this. 😛 😉

Unixcloud is actually the authorized distributor/dealer/seller of MTT GPUs to the Asian market.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yeah, there's no question that this card is hindered by its drivers. Imagination Technologies makes a crap-tonne of GPUs for phones and those work remarkably well while maintaining a very desirable level of power efficiency. Also, the TDP, VRAM and bandwidth all point to this card being capable of far more than what we're seeing. After all, why incur the expense of a 256-bit bus, a PCI-e5 x16 interface and 16GB of GDDR6 only to have it perform like a card with 2GB of VRAM, a 64-bit bus and a PCI-e3 x1 interface?

There's no question that this isn't final silicon and it's even more obvious that whatever drivers were used are only for functionality testing. Don't forget what a train wreck that Arc looked like with early drivers. I have a feeling that this card's gaming performance will be similar to that of an RX 5700 in about a year's time if they make good drivers for it.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

There's no question that this isn't final silicon and it's even more obvious that whatever drivers were used are only for functionality testing. Don't forget what a train wreck that Arc looked like with early drivers. I have a feeling that this card's gaming performance will be similar to that of an RX 5700 in about a year's time if they make good drivers for it.

Yes, suppose, even if this is not the final silicon, they can improve the performance by delivering much better and compatible drivers, not only for games but also for Windows OS compatibility, DirectX support and other apps.

Intel indeed a bad start but they have really improved a LOT by delivering great drivers. Actually, I was surprised to see that much of performance gain by drivers within a short period since the card's release, which the Intel driver/software team delivered.

They have caught up pretty much fast, but still have more work to do. I think the next-gen Battlemage XE2 arch GPUs might bring Intel more closer to AMD and Nvidia, IMO.

But this is still a FAR CRY ! (....now, this wants me to replay the first game in the series ! lol)

On some level, this almost feels like Moore Threads took some generic compute-focused cores and they're now trying to back-engineer drivers to make those compute cores do graphics work. And if the cores don't support half of the base functions needed for DX11/DX12, things can get messy in the software.

There is actually a technical fault in the GPU's architecture/design to some extent, which the drivers are not able to fully utilize. It also has something to do with the Tensor Computing Units, including the four complete functional engines. I will let you know the exact arch details once I get hold of more info.

 

[bit_user]

GAMING aside, the card is more suited for AI and inferencing/training.

With the full-featured MUSA architecture and using the MUSA software stack, developers can easily and quickly migrate existing AI models to MTT S80.

MTT S80 is also compatible with PyTorch, and a variety of other mainstream deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, and can optimize dozens of AI models such as Transformer, CNN, and RNN.

In some tests the GPU exhibited a very strong single-precision floating-point performance. MTT S80, for example, is specially adapted to MONAI, an AI open source framework in the MEDICAL field, to achieve high-precision reasoning for a variety of tasks. I presume they will mostly use this card in this domestic field.

Given what you said before about drawing performance, it's not the FLOPS I'd be worried about.

Some close-up GPU pics. Not mine, but taken from a testing done in the lab by an UNIXCLOUD employee. Taken permission to publish this. 😛 😉

Do you have one? You seem to know a lot about them. Do you read Chinese, or just use Google Translate, heavily?

 

[bit_user]

Yeah, there's no question that this card is hindered by its drivers. Imagination Technologies makes a crap-tonne of GPUs for phones and those work remarkably well while maintaining a very desirable level of power efficiency.

I've heard lots of bad stories about their drivers for phone GPUs, actually.

Also, the TDP, VRAM and bandwidth all point to this card being capable of far more than what we're seeing. After all, why incur the expense of a 256-bit bus, a PCI-e5 x16 interface and 16GB of GDDR6 only to have it perform like a card with 2GB of VRAM, a 64-bit bus and a PCI-e3 x1 interface?

I think there must be some hardware bugs, because it seems difficult to make such high-spec hardware perform quite this bad.

Don't forget what a train wreck that Arc looked like with early drivers.

There's no comparison. Alchemist initially performed like 1/4th of its specs. This thing is performing like 1/40th of its specs. That's why I'm convinced it's got a lot more wrong with it than merely "bad drivers".

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

Do you have one? You seem to know a lot about them. Do you read Chinese, or just use Google Translate, heavily?

No, I don't know how to read/speak Chinese or any other Asian language. I also don't have the card with me. No point in buying one when a GT 1030 will fill the shoes, lol.

Part of it is because of translated internal text/documents and info which I already have in my possession, given to me by contacts and friends. The same copy of the card's English description as given to all international reviewers/testers worldwide (but some slides are still in Chinese).

 

[hannibal]

Good. More competition in GPU market,
But few years more baking is still needed…

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

Some Update:

MTT just released a new GPU driver for the S70/80, providing support for DX11 titles. Some new games have also been added with full support. A good start nonetheless. They are still lagging behind though, and have a lot of catch up to do. 😉

摩尔线程 | Moore Threads

摩尔线程智能科技（北京）有限责任公司成立于2020年10月，是一家以全功能GPU芯片设计为主的集成电路高科技公司，属国家高新技术企业，能够为广泛的科技生态合作伙伴提供强大的计算加速能力，致力于打造为下一代互联网提供多元算力的元计算平台。

www.mthreads.com

The latest driver (222.31.0.1) enables DirectX11 optimizations for the following titles:

• Genshin Impact
• Valorant
• Lostark
• Dyson Sphere Program
• Crysis 3

More supported games :

Supported operating systems:

Windows 10 64bit 21H2 Pro Workstation Edition and later.

▽ What's new:

1. DisplayPort Multi-data Stream (MST) function experience;

2. Display Stream Compression (DSC) function experience, which can achieve 3840Hz refresh rate at 2160 × 144 resolution;

3. Support DirectX 11, DirectX graphics performance further optimized;

4. Further improve drive efficiency and stability.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Some Update:

MTT just released a new GPU driver for the S70/80, providing support for DX11 titles. Some new games have also been added with full support. A good start nonetheless. They are still lagging behind though, and have a lot of catch up to do. 😉

摩尔线程 | Moore Threads

摩尔线程智能科技（北京）有限责任公司成立于2020年10月，是一家以全功能GPU芯片设计为主的集成电路高科技公司，属国家高新技术企业，能够为广泛的科技生态合作伙伴提供强大的计算加速能力，致力于打造为下一代互联网提供多元算力的元计算平台。

www.mthreads.com

The latest driver (222.31.0.1) enables DirectX11 optimizations for the following titles:

• Genshin Impact
• Valorant
• Lostark
• Dyson Sphere Program
• Crysis 3

More supported games :

LOL at that "3840Hz refresh rate at 2160 × 144 resolution" bit. I assume they meant 144Hz at 3840x2160. Which... I guess that does require DSC, but DSC should also allow up to 240Hz at 4K.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

It definitely requires DSC.

 

[shoddyyMic1]

Not yet on a full scale, only few stores had it actually, but the majority of samples sold were given to testers/reviewers. Gamers haven't bought this yet due to obvious reasons like lack of proper API and gaming support. Some Cyber Cafes had it installed, but that also didn't go as expected.

The card also had a retail price of around $300 US in the Chinese domestic market so it seems unlikely that it will sell that well considering the GT 1030 consumes lower power and can be found for lower than $100 US in the same region in abundance.

Furthermore, MTT S80 does not support the latest Windows version/build, and many of the modern games. This card is currently restricted to DX9 games, and it doesn’t even support tessellation, and Shader Model 5.



Not sure about this. But I think CS:GO, League of Legends,, and KartRider.

On their website they do have a lot of games listed as compatible, but as far as I know only DX9 games are BEST supported by this architecture. Even in some reviews DX9 titles showed much better performance than DX10/11 games.



Yes, actually it is ReBAR, IMO, and also because part of PCI Express Gen5 support on this GPU. The S80 has a list of hardware restrictions, as it only works with certain motherboards and monitors.

Officially, the card only supports CPUs newer than Intel’s 10th Gen and AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series. Here is the list of ALL supported mobos as of now.

That's quite a good progress made by MTT. What about the current driver status? Better than before or still ridden with bugs?

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

That's quite a good progress made by MTT. What about the current driver status? Better than before or still ridden with bugs?

The same as before. There have been no updates and patches after the last driver update. So there are bound be few issues found in some games and apps. Next up coming is the Motherboard BIOS and GPU BIOS firmware patches, for more compatibility.