AMD Working on "Dynamic Frame Rate Control" Feature

There isn't any details regarding implementation so everything would be speculation at this point.

It could simply be a frame rate limiter setting in the control panel with a fancy marketing name. This isn't a setting currently exposed in the driver control panel. Also I'm not sure if this is a setting even exposed at all on the driver level for AMD (with Nvidia it is exposed to third party software via the driver).

Or it might actually be something more advanced and exploit efficiency advantages via fully modulating clock speeds and voltages in real time based upon some sort of target frame rate setting.

Or something in between.

Nvidia has something already that is a more advanced form of frame rate limiting aimed at efficiency in it's laptop parts known as "battery boost." Could be something similar. The real world test results are actually quite significant although you could argue whether or not it's "useful" in a desktop setting (to me it would be).
 
Saw in another forum the speaking of Resonant-mesh frequency which is what you speak of. Adding in a frame limit would make resonant mesh plausible and quite the added feature for power saving.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Don't we already have dynamic clock control based on GPU load? How is what they're talking about here any different than what we have now?
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Important thing is this will be supported in official drivers so you won't have to instal additional software to use frame limiter.
 
Radeon Pro has a DFC function, im sure this will be similar.
 
Just a marketing gimmick.. =D.. that's all what i can expect from DFCR.. probably just a mix of adaptive/dynamic vsync with underclocking the card when no large amount of power are needed the same Nvidia introduced with Kepler cards and ther card can dynamic adjust the clock according load.. and probably for R9 285 as its hard(I think) to manage power states clocks in real time by driver level..
 
It looks like they're trying to mimic a feature introduced by Nvidia in 2012 with the GTX 680.
Currently Nvidia already supports a "frame rate target" which the GPU will attempt to hit by adjusting voltages/clocks. It's done through EVGA Precision and maybe some other tools.

There is already a feature named "Dynamic Framerate Control" in RadeonPro. Since the developer now works for Raptr, it looks like they're just going to expand on it. The current implementation in RP does nothing like what Nvidia is already doing, or what this article is talking about.

So it's something entirely new for AMD.
A shame it took them 2 years to do this, I've seen a lot of Nvidia owners giving AMD shit over this since the news was posted. I didn't even know it was an issue.

At this point they would have been better off IGNORING this feature entirely, or secretly adding it to their drivers. Releasing a feature this late after Nvidia is an embarrassment.
 
Michaelius said:
Important thing is this will be supported in official drivers so you won't have to instal additional software to use frame limiter.
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This is more important than many realize. Adding all of these 3rd party programs can cause issues. having the features supported nativley by the game is best. After that through the drivers and control panel. The last thing you want to do, and we are often forced to, is add features with 3rd party software. Crap, it's hard enough to have Windows update not break drivers.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
It looks like they're trying to mimic a feature introduced by Nvidia in 2012 with the GTX 680.
Currently Nvidia already supports a "frame rate target" which the GPU will attempt to hit by adjusting voltages/clocks. It's done through EVGA Precision and maybe some other tools.

There is already a feature named "Dynamic Framerate Control" in RadeonPro. Since the developer now works for Raptr, it looks like they're just going to expand on it. The current implementation in RP does nothing like what Nvidia is already doing, or what this article is talking about.

So it's something entirely new for AMD.
A shame it took them 2 years to do this, I've seen a lot of Nvidia owners giving AMD shit over this since the news was posted. I didn't even know it was an issue.

At this point they would have been better off IGNORING this feature entirely, or secretly adding it to their drivers. Releasing a feature this late after Nvidia is an embarrassment.
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I find it far more embarrassing when a company cuts their noses off to spite their faces and refuse to implement a feature simply because it's from the competition. If it's a good and useful feature, then why deprive your customers of it simply out of some stupid misplaced pride.
 
Relayer said:
I find it far more embarrassing when a company cuts their noses off to spite their faces and refuse to implement a feature simply because it's from the competition. If it's a good and useful feature, then why deprive your customers of it simply out of some stupid misplaced pride.
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Yeah sure, I guess the headlines read "AMD implements new dynamic framerate control for improved power efficiency" as opposed to "AMD copies Nvidia 2 years after the fact".

Most people probably won't even be aware of it.
Hell I didn't even know until a few hours ago.

At least AMD was quick on the draw with the downsampling stuff, a few months after Nvidia. Even ShadowPlay is only from 2013 although I think that's tech Nvidia bought from someone else.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Yeah sure, I guess the headlines read "AMD implements new dynamic framerate control for improved power efficiency" as opposed to "AMD copies Nvidia 2 years after the fact".

Most people probably won't even be aware of it.
Hell I didn't even know until a few hours ago.

At least AMD was quick on the draw with the downsampling stuff, a few months after Nvidia. Even ShadowPlay is only from 2013 although I think that's tech Nvidia bought from someone else.
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I've been doing game play recording using my GPU since I bought my HD7950 at launch just about. AMD releases the tools into the wild for companies and people to experiment with. Then later on they incorporate it into their product line. The same thing that made the AMD GPU's really great at Bitcoin mining also made them awesome at crunching video in real time while playing the game on the same GPU. It worked in Crossfire on day one also. This was years before I heard of the term "ShadowPlay".

Nvidia and AMD copy each other all of the time. Just the way this industry works. :)
 
Wow this is a great thing. No more using 3rd party programs to limit your frames.

They should of released it when Skyrim came out. When Skyrim came out, it was horrible for AMD since it had so much stuttering. Only way to fix it was to limit the framerate at 60.
 
DASHlT said:
Wow this is a great thing. No more using 3rd party programs to limit your frames.

They should of released it when Skyrim came out. When Skyrim came out, it was horrible for AMD since it had so much stuttering. Only way to fix it was to limit the framerate at 60.
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Oh and the gossip is that it will lower your GPU voltage and clocks to save electricity and generate less heat if the GPU isn't needed for intensive jobs. Sounds good on paper at least. We'll see in the next driver release I suppose.
 
cageymaru said:
Oh and the gossip is that it will lower your GPU voltage and clocks to save electricity and generate less heat if the GPU isn't needed for intensive jobs. Sounds good on paper at least. We'll see in the next driver release I suppose.
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Don't get me wrong, saying it saves power is really a gimmick. But having in driver framerate control is just badass.
 
cageymaru said:
Oh and the gossip is that it will lower your GPU voltage and clocks to save electricity and generate less heat if the GPU isn't needed for intensive jobs. Sounds good on paper at least. We'll see in the next driver release I suppose.
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I hardly think it will save more power than a vsync'd game.. as is power utilization which still determine the power consumption and a card with a light game vsync'd at 60hz will have a low GPU utilization no matter if the card is running at full clock dropping the clock and voltage will do basically nothing as probably the GPU utilization will be probably increased to compensate the lower clock just as Nvidia cards?.. but this have a clear issue "stuttering" in very light games.. for example my brother have a "stuttering festival" with league of legends with his 660TI at 60fps 1080P because does not really have any problem to run the game maxed at that resolution and framerate, and what happen? the card runs underclocked at 324mhz-648mhz 90% of the time but in intense battles it have to increase it above 800mhz and it will stutter for a couple of time in that transition in frequency, same happen with my gtx 780 in diablo 3.. the card with a minimal GPU utilization and GPU clock have a lot of stutter in some heavy action scenes.. but guess what, it does not happen with my 280X because the cards its always at 3D clock of 1150mhz. no matter how soft or heavy its the action no stutter due to dynamic clock even when the utilization its at barely 50% at 120hz..
 
So if I get this right it will lower your clocks to lower the FPS so you save power ? Why not just buy slower hardware and get lower FPS that way ?
 
The difference is that traditionally you would have 2 clocks: base and 3D clocks. Generally staying at 3D clocks the whole time no matter the work load, thereby not affecting total power use by much. The new way (if theories and conjectures are true) the clock will adjust to meet the demand using a recycling of power , referred to as resonant-clock mesh by some, giving the opportunity to get great power savings. This was used somewhat (although not the best example on the surface) on AMD CPUs.

(don't hold me to hard to this as it was what I have gathered from others with far more knowledge in the subject)
 
cageymaru said:
http://wccftech.com/amds-reveals-gpu-power-scaling-technology-dfrc-dynamic-frame-rate-control/

In this article they explain that VSYNC doesn't really save you power; it costs nearly the same as running the GPU wide open. So the fact that the GPU is possibly going to underclock or undervolt is a big deal.
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I wish to see soon a Vsync'd game vs DFRC in total system power usage but also a frame limiter like afterburner.. i'm totally skeptical this time and i'm trying to no bite the marketing.. actually the Frame limiter in Afterburner (or EVGA precision frame target) are actually able to limit the FPS to the desired one but they also push the hardware more in order to keep the frame rate as higher as possible but no higher than the desired frame cap.. (work amazing with skyrim and such kind of games).. and it work pushing the GPU and CPU. but well.. we can't do nothing more than just wait.. who knows how much times to see DFRC launched..
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Yeah sure, I guess the headlines read "AMD implements new dynamic framerate control for improved power efficiency" as opposed to "AMD copies Nvidia 2 years after the fact".

Most people probably won't even be aware of it.
Hell I didn't even know until a few hours ago.

At least AMD was quick on the draw with the downsampling stuff, a few months after Nvidia. Even ShadowPlay is only from 2013 although I think that's tech Nvidia bought from someone else.
Click to expand...

Do you have a point? A point that matters today to the general public? Who cares if someone else had it first as long as you can get it when you need it? There's an endless list of things that lots of companies do that someone else came up with first.

The embarrassment for all the factories that copied Henry Ford's production line. We'd be so much better off if nobody else used it.
 
cageymaru said:
In this article they explain that VSYNC doesn't really save you power; it costs nearly the same as running the GPU wide open.
Click to expand...
No. That depends entirely on the workload. If you're striving for 60 Hz, for instance, and the GPU can render frames within 8ms, the GPU gets to enter its idle state for what is essentially 8.7ms. It may not get to enter its low-power clocks and voltages, but that's secondary from being able to idle more than half the time.
 
V-sync doesn't alter frame times produced by the GPU at all. It creates a frame buffer using a multitude of different scenarios like render-ahead (awful implementation) or double/triple buffering. The monitor will only accept 60frames/sec even if your GPU is producing 150frames/sec. The GPU would keep replacing the frames in the buffer at some point in the que according to the V-sync implementation.

Frame capping or DFC forces the cards to only produce frames in intervals that match your frame rate (or lower if you have it set too high). So that same 150frames/sec card would be forced to only render 60frames/sec therefore allowing the GPU to lower its clock to a more appropriate level that would produces frames at that interval. Thereby lower clocks would reduce voltage: reduce power consumption and heat.

So you can see why V-sync alone would marginally reduce power consumption but DFC/Frame capping could greatly reduce it.
 
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