GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

«‹›3858 »

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Maybe it's a GCN bug. I definitely see big differences with my 6850s. But yeesh.

# ? Mar 6, 2013 17:12

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 12, 2024 04:18

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

I was holding off on posting that until a bit more testing is done, because I think it's likely that what they're actually seeing only affects Crossfire when framerates are above the monitor refresh rate AND Vsync is disabled. That said, even if Crossfire is scaling perfectly and all the frames are hitting the display, micro-stutter means you don't actually get a meaningful improvement in motion smoothness over a single card. That was the big thing I noticed when I sold my second card, the framerate didn't "feel" like it dropped as much as the numbers indicated, which meant to me that Crossfire wasn't really improving my experience over one card. And this was in games where the scaling was working well.

# ? Mar 6, 2013 18:42

Gart: Feb 24, 2010

Aleksei Vasiliev posted:

TressFX update: maybe if Nvidia had made it it would have been good

Seems like NVIDIA is having enough trouble getting the game to run without corruption.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 02:25

Malloc Voidstar: May 7, 2007; Fuck the cowboys. Unf. Fuck em hard.

Gart posted:

Seems like NVIDIA is having enough trouble getting the game to run without corruption.

NVIDIA posted:

We are aware of performance and stability issues with GeForce GPUs running Tomb Raider with maximum settings. Unfortunately, NVIDIA didn�t receive final game code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible.

Please be advised that these issues cannot be completely resolved by an NVIDIA driver. The developer will need to make code changes on their end to fix the issues on GeForce GPUs as well. As a result, we recommend you do not test Tomb Raider until all of the above issues have been resolved.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 02:38

Gart: Feb 24, 2010

Yeah, that sounds like they started "aggressively optimizing" their driver profile of this game too early and got burned for it, and are now throwing the game developer under the bus for it.

I think what's likely happening here is that they started looking at the frame contents and identifying corners you can cut behind the scenes to program the GPU more efficiently (stuff like ignoring certain unnecessary synchronization or maybe even replacing certain shaders). Stuff that technically you would need to do if you were implementing the API, but you know you don't have to as long as you're confident that the game runs the way you expect.

All GPU companies do it, but if you start doing it too early (e.g. before the game is officially out), you run the risk of what happened here, and I don't think it's necessarily fair to blame the game developer in that situation though.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 02:49

Don Lapre: Mar 28, 2001; If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.

Tressfx works great on my 670 till the game and video card vomit all over themselves.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 02:52

Don Lapre: Mar 28, 2001; If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.

Using nvidia inspector and adding tomb raider exe to the hitman absolution profile seems to fix the problems.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 03:58

BeanBandit: Mar 15, 2001; Beanbandit?
Son of a bitch!

I impulse bought a 680, and the increase in performance from my 580 has been pretty underwhelming. These are all at 2560x1600 and an i7 920 OCed to 3.3 GHz.

code:

	580	680
Tomb Raider - Ultra settings
min	18.40	18.20
max	29.20	33.95
avg	26.55	31.20

Tomb Raider - Ultimate settings
min	Crash	 8.35
max	Crash	26.20
avg	Crash	22.05

Starcraft II gameplay
min	38.50	42.5
max	52.50	53.5
avg	48.23	49.5

Starcraft II cutscene
min	28	32
max	42	51
avg	37.85	46.25

Flight Simulator X
min	12	12
max	16.5	16.5
avg	14.175	14.37

I know FSX is heavily CPU dependent, so I wasn't expecting miracles, but I also wasn't expecting no difference at all. And I can't even hit 60 FPS in Starcraft II? I thought there was something wrong with the card or my drivers at first, but I've reinstalled and still no difference.

I think I may have just picked the wrong games to benchmark. I'm installing Battlefield 3 and hoping for good things, and hopefully driver updates will improve Tomb Raider. Still, I may end up returning it.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 05:52

unpronounceable: Apr 4, 2010; You mean we still have another game to go through?!; Fallen Rib

BeanBandit posted:

I impulse bought a 680, and the increase in performance from my 580 has been pretty underwhelming. These are all at 2560x1600 and an i7 920 OCed to 3.3 GHz.
code:
	580	680
Starcraft II gameplay
min	38.50	42.5
max	52.50	53.5
avg	48.23	49.5

Starcraft II cutscene
min	28	32
max	42	51
avg	37.85	46.25
I know FSX is heavily CPU dependent, so I wasn't expecting miracles, but I also wasn't expecting no difference at all. And I can't even hit 60 FPS in Starcraft II? I thought there was something wrong with the card or my drivers at first, but I've reinstalled and still no difference.

I think I may have just picked the wrong games to benchmark. I'm installing Battlefield 3 and hoping for good things, and hopefully driver updates will improve Tomb Raider. Still, I may end up returning it.

For SC2, it's surprisingly CPU dependent. Looking at the Anandtech Bench, i7 990X is clocked higher than your 920, and has much more L3 cache, which SC2 likes, and it still doesn't average 60FPS. I'd guess that you're CPU limited there.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 05:59

Gwaihir: Dec 8, 2009; Hair Elf

I also upgraded from a 480 to a 680, also at 2560*1600 with an i7-920 @ 3.4 ghz, but didn't see a huge increase until I upgraded to an ivy bridge chip at @ 4.5 a few weeks back. You're probably CPU limited.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 21:23

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

None of those 3 benchmarks are really appropriate for video card comparison.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 21:28

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

BeanBandit posted:

I impulse bought a 680, and the increase in performance from my 580 has been pretty underwhelming. These are all at 2560x1600 and an i7 920 OCed to 3.3 GHz.

You should not expect a large performance improvement. There is usually not enough difference between cards of the same position from one generation to another to justify an upgrade (you wait at least two), and in particular the GTX 680 is focused on power-efficiency, not peak performance, so it's certainly not head-and-shoulders above the GTX 580.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 21:41

BeanBandit: Mar 15, 2001; Beanbandit?
Son of a bitch!

TheRationalRedditor posted:

None of those 3 benchmarks are really appropriate for video card comparison.

But those are the three games I'm playing right now okay GEEZ < :mad:

>.

Yeah, like I said, it was an impulse buy. I was hoping to hit 60 FPS in SC2 before Heart of the Swarm hits next week, but it's not a big deal. Now I have to decide whether to do the reasonable thing and return the 680 or just say gently caress it and build a new computer.

# ? Mar 7, 2013 22:14

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

Return the GTX 680 and then build a Haswell system later this year and overclock the balls off of it (5Ghz or go home!), since it's clear you want as much per-thread CPU performance as you can get.

# ? Mar 8, 2013 00:34

lil sartre: Feb 12, 2009; by Y Kant Ozma Post

Aleksei Vasiliev posted:

That's bullshit, my hd5870 is running 5 month old drivers and has no problem with tomb raider (other than the lovely framerate on ultra, but its just a 5870 after all), I doubt amd had access to final code 5 months ago.

# ? Mar 8, 2013 08:49

deimos: Nov 30, 2006; Forget it man this bat is whack, it's got poobrain!

RMAing the open box GTX 670 would make it more expensive than a brand new 670 (and go into the 680 price range). Time to return it to Amazon :10bux:

I'll never see again.

# ? Mar 8, 2013 16:07

Don Lapre: Mar 28, 2001; If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.

deimos posted:

RMAing the open box GTX 670 would make it more expensive than a brand new 670 (and go into the 680 price range). Time to return it to Amazon I'll never see again.

Amazon pays return shipping and should refund your original shipping.

# ? Mar 8, 2013 16:31

deimos: Nov 30, 2006; Forget it man this bat is whack, it's got poobrain!

Don Lapre posted:

Amazon pays return shipping and should refund your original shipping.

They won't pay all the shipping from here, but it's ok, it's my fault for living in the butt of the world.

# ? Mar 8, 2013 16:48

mayodreams: Jul 4, 2003; Hello darkness,
my old friend

I went from a 5870 to a 680 and the performance difference was insane, even on the same i5 2500k. Which is why you should really wait at least 2 gens like Alereon said.

# ? Mar 8, 2013 19:43

deimos: Nov 30, 2006; Forget it man this bat is whack, it's got poobrain!

mayodreams posted:

I went from a 5870 to a 680 and the performance difference was insane, even on the same i5 2500k. Which is why you should really wait at least 2 gens like Alereon said.

It really depends on the game wether you'll be CPU or GPU bound. Most MMOs are heavily CPU bound, I get roughly twice the FPS I used to on Rift by going from a 3.6GHz i5 760 to a conservative 4.2GHz i5 3570K. Some other games are also very CPU-bound.

Also regarding two screens: using a DXVA media player (or even a flash player) on your non-game screen will affect performance (albeit slightly), although I have not yet fiddled with Virtu to see if that has any effect.

deimos fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 8, 2013

# ? Mar 8, 2013 19:52

slidebite: Nov 6, 2005; Good egg

What's Zotac like for a manufacturer for 6xx series? I've never heard of them until recently.

slidebite fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Mar 9, 2013

# ? Mar 9, 2013 23:04

Animal: Apr 8, 2003

slidebite posted:

What's Zotac like for a manufacturer for 6xx series? I've never heard of them until recently.

They are decent and gaining a reputation as good.

# ? Mar 10, 2013 01:13

SlayVus: Jul 10, 2009; Grimey Drawer

slidebite posted:

What's Zotac like for a manufacturer for 6xx series? I've never heard of them until recently.

I've had a Zotac GTX 460 1GB for almost 17 months now with no problem. I have it in SLI with a Sparkle GTX 460 1GB that I traded an HD 4870 X2 for. The Sparkle was about 6 months old when I traded for it. Now, it's about 3 years old.

# ? Mar 10, 2013 16:16

Nokiaman: Mar 2, 2013

What exactly are differences between different GPU BIOSes?
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/
Is it something minor like different clock speeds/voltages etc.?

# ? Mar 10, 2013 18:33

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Voltage control, default frequencies, types of controls exposed to the system/driver (like whether you can overclock/change voltage or not), and manufacturer-specific tweaks.

# ? Mar 10, 2013 19:21

Nokiaman: Mar 2, 2013

Factory Factory posted:

Voltage control, default frequencies, types of controls exposed to the system/driver (like whether you can overclock/change voltage or not), and manufacturer-specific tweaks.

Interesting. That explains why there is so many different versions.

# ? Mar 10, 2013 19:51

mobby_6kl: Aug 9, 2009; by Fluffdaddy

So I went to check on the upcoming GPUs to see what could go into my planned Haswell machine, and it seems that both Nvidia and AMD pushed back their Maxwell/Sea Islands architectures to 2014 :confused:

Is there anything coming up at all, or would I not be able to pair the processor with anything new and shiny? In that case, how would the Haswell IGP compare to, say a 8800GT?

# ? Mar 10, 2013 19:52

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

mobby_6kl posted:

So I went to check on the upcoming GPUs to see what could go into my planned Haswell machine, and it seems that both Nvidia and AMD pushed back their Maxwell/Sea Islands architectures to 2014 Is there anything coming up at all, or would I not be able to pair the processor with anything new and shiny? In that case, how would the Haswell IGP compare to, say a 8800GT?

AMD is going to do a refresh near the end of the year, but yeah you're going to be waiting quite some time for real upgrades. Haswell is coming out in a confusing array of graphics options, but the highest-end option is GT3+eDRAM, which performs at about the level of a Geforce GT 650M, so faster than a desktop 8800 GT. Most models will not have the integrated video memory, so will not perform at that level, but we haven't seen final graphics lineups yet.

# ? Mar 10, 2013 20:03

Shimrra Jamaane: Aug 10, 2007; Obscure to all except those well-versed in Yuuzhan Vong lore.

I thought the Geforce 700 series was coming out this summer? Or are they still part of the Kepler class? Which means that the Maxwells would be the 800 series right?

Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Mar 11, 2013

# ? Mar 11, 2013 07:28

chippy: Aug 16, 2006; OK I DON'T GET IT

This isn't an upgrade question, but it is a part-picking question. I thought it might fit better in here than in the system building/part picking thread, but feel free to tell me to gently caress off there if it's not.

Basically, I just resurrected my old gaming rig to turn it into a media/semi-casual gaming box for the living room TV. It's got an ageing 8800 GTX in it that has seen better days, I think it's dying of heat death, and when playing games on it, the picture cuts out every now and then (as in, the TV goes into a no signal state for a few seconds). This is the fault that prompted me to replace the machine in the first place.

Anyway tl:dr, I just want a drop-in replacement for the 8800GTX from the last few generations that'll hopefully perform similarly so the machine can still be gamed on but not cost a huge amount. I don't mind going second-hand or a bit older. The TV it's plugged into is only 1280x720 so it doesn't need a huge amount of horsepower although I may pick up a 1080p telly at some point. Something bit quieter than the 8800 would be nice too.

Hmm, I've just realised I could just pick up an 8800GTX on ebay for about 30 quid. Still, it's noisy as gently caress, so I'd probably prefer something slightly more modern. Any suggestions?

# ? Mar 11, 2013 11:53

movax: Aug 30, 2008

chippy posted:

This isn't an upgrade question, but it is a part-picking question. I thought it might fit better in here than in the system building/part picking thread, but feel free to tell me to gently caress off there if it's not.

Basically, I just resurrected my old gaming rig to turn it into a media/semi-casual gaming box for the living room TV. It's got an ageing 8800 GTX in it that has seen better days, I think it's dying of heat death, and when playing games on it, the picture cuts out every now and then (as in, the TV goes into a no signal state for a few seconds). This is the fault that prompted me to replace the machine in the first place.

Anyway tl:dr, I just want a drop-in replacement for the 8800GTX from the last few generations that'll hopefully perform similarly so the machine can still be gamed on but not cost a huge amount. I don't mind going second-hand or a bit older. The TV it's plugged into is only 1280x720 so it doesn't need a huge amount of horsepower although I may pick up a 1080p telly at some point. Something bit quieter than the 8800 would be nice too.

Hmm, I've just realised I could just pick up an 8800GTX on ebay for about 30 quid. Still, it's noisy as gently caress, so I'd probably prefer something slightly more modern. Any suggestions?

What's your budget like? You could probably get a used Fermi card (GTX4xx/5xx) for pretty cheap from someone who's upgrade, and if it's halfway-decent OEM, the cooler should be pretty drat quiet. My eVGA GTX460 was usually inaudible even under heavy load.

# ? Mar 11, 2013 18:23

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Assuming the 8800 GTX isn't too wildly different than an 8800 GT (like, less than 20% difference), a Radeon 7750 should be a drop-in replacement, and a 7770 GHz Edition should be a moderate upgrade.

# ? Mar 11, 2013 18:35

deimos: Nov 30, 2006; Forget it man this bat is whack, it's got poobrain!

Factory Factory posted:

Assuming the 8800 GTX isn't too wildly different than an 8800 GT (like, less than 20% difference), a Radeon 7750 should be a drop-in replacement, and a 7770 GHz Edition should be a moderate upgrade.

Also it'll be cheaper to run, 8800 GTX was a pretty big power hog, even on idle.

# ? Mar 11, 2013 19:48

redeyes: Sep 14, 2002; by Fluffdaddy

deimos posted:

Also it'll be cheaper to run, 8800 GTX was a pretty big power hog, even on idle.

A HD 7770 will destroy the 8800GTX in anything that has pixel shaders.

# ? Mar 11, 2013 20:38

Endymion FRS MK1: Oct 29, 2011; I don't know what this thing is, and I don't care. I'm just tired of seeing your stupid newbie av from 2011.

Speaking of 7770's, AMD's newest card is a 7790. Based on a new 28nm (article says 22, the source says 28. 28 is correct) process and GCN 2.0, I guess its a testbed for the higher end 8000 series?

# ? Mar 11, 2013 22:08

The Illusive Man: Mar 27, 2008; ~savior of yoomanity~

Endymion FRS MK1 posted:

Speaking of 7770's, AMD's newest card is a 7790. Based on a new 28nm (article says 22, the source says 28. 28 is correct) process and GCN 2.0, I guess its a testbed for the higher end 8000 series?

Sounds like this was supposed to be the 8770 and they decided to ship it now rather than wait till the fall/winter when the rest of the 8000 series rollout is supposed to happen. Interesting little card, I'm curious how the pricing will shake out. If they can ship this for $130-$140 with 90% of the 7850's performance, that'll be a pretty compelling budget card.

Speaking of budget cards, I was toying around with the idea of building a cheap living room Steambox-esque rig and was putting some parts together, but I was having a hard time figuring out what video card would be optimal. We have a 50" 1366x768 plasma display in the living room, so I was figuring on tossing in a 7770 GHz edition and calling it a day, but I wasn't sure if even that would be pushing past the point of diminishing returns for that low of resolution. Would a 7750 be more appropriate for such a build, or will the upcoming generation of DX11 games merit a little more horsepower, even at 720P?

e: Sorry if this crosses over too much into parts-picking, I'm months away from any purchasing decisions and this seemed a more appropriate place to figure out the proper cards for a 720P-only situation.

The Illusive Man fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Mar 12, 2013

# ? Mar 12, 2013 03:15

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

I'm quite happy with a 7750 in my little Core i3 540 couchbox. I can't speak for future games, but it's pretty darn nice right now.

# ? Mar 12, 2013 03:16

Don Lapre: Mar 28, 2001; If you're having problems you're either holding the phone wrong or you have tiny girl hands.

Amd naming is so god drat confusing.

# ? Mar 12, 2013 04:32

MMD3: May 16, 2006; Montmartre -> Portland

I've recently been experiencing some serious video stutter/lag/jutter. don't really know how to describe it but it's a huge pain in the rear end and I'm not sure what to attribute it to. It seems like it's been recent as of *maybe* a driver update, that's the only thing I can really think of that's changed in my setup recently. I was able to play Farcry 3 a few months back without much issue at all but last month when I went to play The Witcher 2 it was nearly unplayably bad, tons of video lag, long loadtimes, stuttering, etc. even after tons of settings tweaks it's still a pain in the rear end to play.

I was wondering if this could possibly be an issue with a new AMD driver?

Here're my specs.
Win7 64
i7-870 @ 2.93GHz
8GB DDR3 1600
Sapphire Radeon HD5830

OS is running off of a 150GB SSD but most of my games are loaded to a 7200rpm HDD.

I can load a video of the video stuttering to youtube or something if someone's curious to see what it's doing. I just experienced the stuttering in The Banner Saga which as far as I can tell isn't a remotely taxing game.

# ? Mar 12, 2013 05:46

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 12, 2024 04:18

Alereon: Feb 6, 2004; Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed; College Slice

MMD3 posted:

I was wondering if this could possibly be an issue with a new AMD driver?

Yes, that is a known issue with the release drivers. Uninstall, reboot and clean remnants with Driver Fusion (free), reboot and install the latest Catalyst Beta driver (13.2 Beta 7 last I looked).

# ? Mar 12, 2013 06:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

«‹›3858 »