Async Compute!

[razor1]

Its not a silly conversation we are having, its specifically to clear the air of any misunderstandings because at this very basic level, its easier to do, if you let things slide now, once you start talking about more complex topics that are built upon these it will get even more confounded. And yeah they will more than likely come up because as dev's start using these features in different ways we are going to see the changes in benchmarks and start thinking of what is going on.

 

[Zion Halcyon]

Its not a silly conversation we are having, its specifically to clear the air of any misunderstandings because at this very basic level, its easier to do, if you let things slide now, once you start talking about more complex topics that are built upon these it will get even more confounded. And yeah they will more than likely come up because as dev's start using these features in different ways we are going to see the changes in benchmarks and start thinking of what is going on.

The problem is that we have someone in you who while attempting "to clear the air of any misunderstandings" is perpetuating misunderstandings him/herself, essentially bucking what every developer, programmer, and yes, marketer has had to say on the subject.

 

[Ieldra]

ITs fun to read, u used to have lots of good posts, i meen when ur new name came on, i read this forum evryday, and you have far more knowlages abaut arictecture and stuff than me, i just am an old gamer, who usd to be quite good.

IN mars, and sometime to middel of april , you had good posts, what happend ?

Now ur posts is well your a bigger nvida fan boy than razort, ur fun.

I'm pretty sure I've been saying the same things since I signed up to the forum in March

 

[razor1]

The problem is that we have someone in you who while attempting "to clear the air of any misunderstandings" is perpetuating misunderstandings him/herself, essentially bucking what every developer, programmer, and yes, marketer has had to say on the subject.

I am not the only one I will say is definitely wrong is the guy that went on forum and talked crap and AMD's marketing. The devs that were at GDC stated the same things I was saying for months before

 

[PontiacGTX]

List me all the current retail PC games that are shipping that currently utilize Async Compute, Go:

Ashes of the Singularity
Hitman
Total War Warhammer

Thief

Incoming
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Battlezone VR

 

[razor1]

See there is a good post of you razort, you changed some, your more neutral now, than you used to be. And as i kno from your posts, u know a lot, but 2 months ago you was all green, now a bit more neutral.

Well, i have fun reading this forums, im not nowhere nere of your knowlage, but i bet a bottel of whiskey i beat u at Dune2000, thats how long i been a gamer.

Also depends if I'm drinking or not, the more I drink the more I focus on what it best, and don't care about the rest lol, yeah a couple of months ago i was definitly more green, because the topics were slanted so that red looked better, end of it AMD does have better async compute implementation, but by no means nV not capable of doing it, they just couldn't do it as well in certain circumstances. And if we look at best implementations for each IHV, AMD will still win with the amount total amount of async compute performance increase because they have more ALU throughput and have more underutilized ALU's per clock.

 

[Ieldra]

See there is a good post of you razort, you changed some, your more neutral now, than you used to be. And as i kno from your posts, u know a lot, but 2 months ago you was all green, now a bit more neutral.

Well, i have fun reading this forums, im not nowhere nere of your knowlage, but i bet a bottel of whiskey i beat u at Dune2000, thats how long i been a gamer.

Can I haz easier posts to read?

 

[Imhotep]

Ashes of the Singularity
Hitman
Total War Warhammer

Thief

We don't give a shit how NVidia does it to match it. Point is. Marketing goes by what the Devs. are seeing. You perceive the marketing as not capable of understanding the tech. They don't have to. Their job is to market what works.
It clearly works. Most people will not care which chimp mouth's it comes from. Lets stop nit picking and focus on the fact that it works. Hopefully in hardware from NVidia one day

 

[Ieldra]

We don't give a shit how NVidia does it to match it. Point is. Marketing goes by what the Devs. are seeing. You perceive the marketing as not capable of understanding the tech. They don't have to. Their job is to market what works.
It clearly works. Most people will not care which chimp mouth's it comes from. Lets stop nit picking and focus on the fact that it works. Hopefully in hardware from NVidia one day

It's obvious you don't give a shit. The question is, why pretend you know what you're talking about when you have no qualms when it comes to admitting you don't give a shit?

I don't give a shit about endocrinology, do you see me pretending to be an endocrinologist?

 

[Imhotep]

Can I haz easier posts to read?

No need to be a dick. I know enough to make my own decision as to what I see working or not.
Im not pretending something im not. Neither should you. No amount of information will change how well it works for each hardware party involved. You have shown who you really are and no amount of knowledge you pretend to have will change that

 

[Ieldra]

No need to be a dick.

Indeed, there's no need. That goes both ways, I'm sure you understand how irritating it is to be treated like a blithering idiot hellbent on pushing 'fanboy' views on everyone when I carefully source all my shit.

Not to mention the fact that I'm actually well informed because I study these things. I don't bring that up very often, because it's a dickish thing to say, and comes off as being patronizing, which I don't want to do

 

[razor1]

I builded a lot of computes, but i have no knolage abaut whats behinde it, you do have, you and maghichian are the 2 most that know abaut arcitecture and stuff i know that posts on forums, who know most of u 2. i dont know.

Any way we can bet a bottel of wiskey on Dune2000, one of the first online games.

Damn you are probably as old as I am then, or close to it, I started playing pc games with a 8088, Wizardry 1 was the first game I played. well game with graphics lol, played zork text based games too

 

[Ieldra]

Well at first your posts was good, latly, u got the medal of the biggest nvida fan boy i ever seen, how long is that, well i started s a gamer with Dune, so that make it, your the biggest nvida fanboy, i seen since abaut 1998. Respect to you

Thanks for the medal I guess...

If, as you've said yourself, you don't know much about lower level working of the hardware, what exactly qualifies you to say I'm lying or I'm a fanboy?

 

[Imhotep]

Indeed, there's no need. That goes both ways, I'm sure you understand how irritating it is to be treated like a blithering idiot hellbent on pushing 'fanboy' views on everyone when I carefully source all my shit.

Not to mention the fact that I'm actually well informed because I study these things. I don't bring that up very often, because it's a dickish thing to say, and comes off as being patronizing, which I don't want to do

Best of luck to you studying this. Hopefully Nvidia gives you a job in the future so you can revolutionize the GPU landscape. lol

 

[Ieldra]

Well the way you post is pure fanboi, so you get the medal for that.

The 'way I post' is it? You mean, like, using sources and things like that?

 

[Ieldra]

Best of luck to you studying this. Hopefully Nvidia gives you a job in the future so you can revolutionize the GPU landscape. lol

Thanks, but there really isn't much luck involved.

 

[Zion Halcyon]

Not at first, i was courious who you was, u have lot of knowlages, you do, but well take it how you will, instead of discussing , pros and cons, as you did, when you reantred this forum, this last 3 weeks, you get the medal for the biggest fanboi i ever seen on any forum on internet.

Im not counting kids without knowlage, that posts AMD is best or Nvida is best. But in evry post you have , and you have some knowlae, ur fanboi shines so true, that i actually dont belive ur posts anymore. Its just how it is, you asked, i answered.

If you are speaking with Leldra, yeah, he's a total fanboi for Nvidia. I don't think he could hide that If he tried his hardest.

 

[Ieldra]

Not at first, i was courious who you was, u have lot of knowlages, you do, but well take it how you will, instead of discussing , pros and cons, as you did, when you reantred this forum, this last 3 weeks, you get the medal for the biggest fanboi i ever seen on any forum on internet.

Im not counting kids without knowlage, that posts AMD is best or Nvida is best. But in evry post you have , and you have some knowlae, ur fanboi shines so true, that i actually dont belive ur posts anymore. Its just how it is, you asked, i answered.

I've been discussing pros and cons ad nauseum since march man.

Since the conversation is always skewed with misinformation biasing the whole discussion towards GCN, I'm forced to repeatedly argue 'in defense of' nvidia

 

[Brent_Justice]

AoTs - Given
Hitman - DX12
Quantum Break - DX12

Upcoming
Dues EX
Doom (Vulkan)

Does Hitman in DX12 really use Async Compute? Got any proof of this?
Same for Quantum Break

Show me proof that these games are using Async Compute specifically please.

 

[Chimpee]

The way I see it, both side fans are coming out very strong in the past couple of days to the point where it feels like they are personnally attacking each other is getting tiring.

Also regarding Async Compute, is it safe for me to assume since Async Compute is for low level programming, any game design for Async Compute takes advantage of whatever architecture it developing for and may not take advantage of other archetectural whether it be AMD or nVidia?

 

[Brent_Justice]

Is that confirmation you WONT be trying to bench the RX 480 against the GTX 1070?

We just compared the 1070 to 980 Ti and Fury X, that should answer your question if we do at times compare things by performance, and not price point.

 

[lolfail9001]

Does Hitman in DX12 really use Async Compute? Got any proof of this?
Same for Quantum Break

Show me proof that these games are using Async Compute specifically please.

Uhh, Brent. Do Hitman dev words about difficulties related with implementation of Async Compute in the game count? I mean, i can look up the interview right now if they do.

 

[Brent_Justice]

AMD touted Hitman's async implementation, dev later claimed "5-10%" performance improvement. But as we've seen, it depends on the game and GCN gen. Could also be more focused towards consoles.

This

 

[Brent_Justice]

I don't own RotTR, but DOOM runs at mid 90's at 2560 x 1440 on my 5930K stock clocks + Fury X with latest drivers at the same settings.

Which brings up the big question again, how much FPS is enough, and what do you really need to enjoy a game? That's why we focus on the gameplay experience, and not raw "FPS Wins" in gaming performance.

 

[lolfail9001]

Which brings up the big question again, how much FPS is enough, and what do you really need to enjoy a game? That's why we focus on the gameplay experience, and not raw "FPS Wins" in gaming performance.

To be honest, that is highly subjective, that's why i am mostly interested in your fps graphs (and some commentary on the side).

With that said, when you guys will use PresentMon for Dx12, dammit.

 

[Ieldra]

I didnt see him as a fanboi . He knows a lot, i maybe know how to build computers, i meen, what gives u most for the money, but i no whay near the knowlage ledra, razort or magician have. But i do know how things perform.

The first weeks ledra was posting he was telling bad and good with both, both amd and nvida, just read hes first posts, then read them now.........meadal for the biggest fanboi.

i cant take him serious, hes like chizow.

Thanks for your opinion! Meanwhile if anyone wants to judge for themselves they'll find plenty of evidence, sources and sound logic in my posts.

 

[Brent_Justice]

So their is a gain on PC (as stated in one of the tweets posted by the OP) and a gain on consoles. So its a feature we should embrace, but we hate on it because?

The problem is, a poor implementation of it can harm performance. You can't just throw it on and expect a performance improvement, and it is not always the best thing in all and every situation or game. From what I've heard developers talking about, it takes time to properly utilize the feature and that it has to be optimized specifically between AMD and NVIDIA, taking more time. Not doing so, can harm performance.

The game developer has to decide if the time to implement it is worth the performance gain, like they do every feature used. If the gain is only 5-10%, it may not be worth it to them to spend the time to make it work well.

That's what I'm concerned about. People think we are dissing Async Compute. Quite the contrary, what I'm concerned about is that it isn't going to be a widespread feature because of these issues. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in games this year, maybe every single game coming will support it and use it. If so, great, I'll continue to evaluate game performance as we always do. But right now, right this very moment, the entire thing is unclear to me, I do not know which way the door is going to swing in relation to game support using Async Compute, so I have to run with some modicum of restraint and conservatism on the subject so that I can remain objective. The burden is on the game, the game developer, the GPU etc... to prove to me, that the feature is worth a darn in games. It is just one feature, out of many, it isn't the end all be all of everything that some people are attaching to it.

 

[Ieldra]

The problem is, a poor implementation of it can harm performance. You can't just throw it on and expect a performance improvement, and it is not always the best thing in all and every situation or game. From what I've heard developers talking about, it takes time to properly utilize the feature and that it has to be optimized specifically between AMD and NVIDIA, taking more time. Not doing so, can harm performance.

The game developer has to decide if the time to implement it is worth the performance gain, like they do every feature used. If the gain is only 5-10%, it may not be worth it to them to spend the time to make it work well.

That's what I'm concerned about. People thing we are dissing Async Compute. Quite the contrary, what I'm concerned about is that it isn't going to be a widespread feature because of these issues. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in games this year, maybe every single game coming will support it and use it. If so, great, I'll continue to evaluate game performance as we always do. But right now, right this very moment, the entire thing is unclear to me, I do not know which way the door is going to swing in relation to game support using Async Compute, so I have to run with some modicum of restraint and conservatism on the subject so that I can remain objective. The burden is on the game, the game developer, the GPU etc... to prove to me, that the feature is worth a darn in games. It is just one feature, out of many, it isn't the end all be all of everything that some people are attaching to it.

There's too much common sense here Brent. I'm afraid you've been bought and paid for by nvidia

You present the issue as if it isn't a simple question of 'enabling async', what madness is this?

 

[Brent_Justice]

Everything about the Polaris webcast that we have had access or knowledge of has been posted on the news page, including direct links several times to the live webcast event itself, which has all the information AMD has given. We even have a dedicated article published about the latest APUs. So I find your complaint about neutrality or bias on the news page to be misguided.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

Guys context switching is not part of async compute at ALL! Context switching should only be used in time sensitive or latency sensitive situation where the program tells the driver, we need this done first before proceeding to anything else. What we saw in Maxwell once the static partitioning broke down, it started using context switching because the driver didn't know what to do anymore as the GPU was stalling. This is a big NO NO something with the program has caused to break the driver down.

Context switching can be useful during load balancing however. Seeing that 80% of your time per frame is spent on async compute, you could rearrange more of your resources to dynamically swap out. But I believe this is currently beyond the ability of any current graphics cards. (Thread pool prioritization)

 

[primetime]

I didnt say that, kyle posted the first link as proof in from ati to amd to ati, as a proof, they are from same site, i do belive you, but i find it strane, i reead seeking alpha a lot, beouse its abaut investin, but i know it is just blogs, its not proffesinals, but kyle provided that link as a proof, but you havnt linked to the oposit, so i only want to say, dont use blogs to stupity, u have 2 articles from same site, 100 % diffrent, thats a fact.

Yoo now the foroms heve bualt in spealchek? lol I didn't know if you new

 

[razor1]

I didnt say that, kyle posted the first link as proof in from ati to amd to ati, as a proof, they are from same site, i do belive you, but i find it strane, i reead seeking alpha a lot, beouse its abaut investin, but i know it is just blogs, its not proffesinals, but kyle provided that link as a proof, but you havnt linked to the oposit, so i only want to say, dont use blogs to stupity, u have 2 articles from same site, 100 % diffrent, thats a fact.

seeking alpha blogs are opinion pieces.

Lets look at Forbes, they had two recent articles about AMD's strategy, both showed pros and cons of it and the conclusion of both came down to everything is in nV's hand and the 1060 lol.

This is the problem, AMD has nothing in their control, they are reacting to market pressures that are being set by nV. We can sit around and believe AMD's marketing team when they say they are leaders in their respect CPU and GPU markets by their leadership stance on bringing new technology to the market first, like HBM, Console wins,or see it as great they made something that the competition can use and beat AMD with lol. Because its a fine line between winning and losing. AMD doesn't have the luxury to thread the needle because one mistake can hurt them at this point making recovery nearly impossible, and they are in this position because they did some bad decisions in the past. The current management is doing the best they can for what they were handed to them. Wall street might have "accepted" AMD's optimistic view, but one small mistake that optimism will go way fast.

 

[razor1]

you are an economics major right? Look at it this way, if you were to advise a company of product strategy, would you tell them the best thing to do is make products that go for the mainstream market and let the competition have the performance market (looking at the potential profits of each and volume sales of each)?

 

[tybert7]

Its not a silly conversation we are having, its specifically to clear the air of any misunderstandings because at this very basic level, its easier to do, if you let things slide now, once you start talking about more complex topics that are built upon these it will get even more confounded. And yeah they will more than likely come up because as dev's start using these features in different ways we are going to see the changes in benchmarks and start thinking of what is going on.

/tangent

speaking of fanboys, I just want to see all the nvidia fans recommending 960s over equivalent amd parts (and yes, even 970s after we learned about maxwell limitations in dx12, though that is still tolerable) publicly apologize for leading the nvidia flock astray.


Total War WARHAMMER DX12: PC graphics performance benchmark review


The 960, one of the most popular nvidia cards, total trash longevity. We tried to tell them, but the nvidia brigade kept saying nothing to see here. Let them suffer.

 

[Brent_Justice]

Brent, just go back here in this tread, the op shows that peoples that actually make games say think. What is ur answear, well its there in black and white Brent, i dont have to say anything, do i ?

I don't understand your question

 

[Zion Halcyon]

The problem is, a poor implementation of it can harm performance. You can't just throw it on and expect a performance improvement, and it is not always the best thing in all and every situation or game. From what I've heard developers talking about, it takes time to properly utilize the feature and that it has to be optimized specifically between AMD and NVIDIA, taking more time. Not doing so, can harm performance.

The game developer has to decide if the time to implement it is worth the performance gain, like they do every feature used. If the gain is only 5-10%, it may not be worth it to them to spend the time to make it work well.

That's what I'm concerned about. People think we are dissing Async Compute. Quite the contrary, what I'm concerned about is that it isn't going to be a widespread feature because of these issues. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in games this year, maybe every single game coming will support it and use it. If so, great, I'll continue to evaluate game performance as we always do. But right now, right this very moment, the entire thing is unclear to me, I do not know which way the door is going to swing in relation to game support using Async Compute, so I have to run with some modicum of restraint and conservatism on the subject so that I can remain objective. The burden is on the game, the game developer, the GPU etc... to prove to me, that the feature is worth a darn in games. It is just one feature, out of many, it isn't the end all be all of everything that some people are attaching to it.

Frankly, I think AMD needs more market penetration to get more to jump on the Async bandwagon. However, it is a good sign when game developers are trying to win over their own to the cause.

Also, while unsubstantiated, there are rumors that the new Deus Ex will have a very strong DX12 implementation, and could be a "best case" scenario for showing off what it can do.

 

[Cr4ckm0nk3y]

People seem to forget the fact that IO even stated Async was very difficult to tweak and can have the opposite effect it was intended to have.

IO Interactive further said that Async Compute is “super-hard to tune,” and putting too much Async work can even result in downgrading the performance.

Unreal even cautions devs on using Async:

AsyncCompute should be used with caution as it can cause more unpredicatble performance and requires more coding effort for synchromization.

As of now Async is not the holy grail PC gamers have been looking for in terms of noticeable performance boosts with little to no cost.

 

[razor1]

/tangent

speaking of fanboys, I just want to see all the nvidia fans recommending 960s over equivalent amd parts (and yes, even 970s after we learned about maxwell limitations in dx12, though that is still tolerable) publicly apologize for leading the nvidia flock astray.


Total War WARHAMMER DX12: PC graphics performance benchmark review


The 960, one of the most popular nvidia cards, total trash longevity. We tried to tell them, but the nvidia brigade kept saying nothing to see here. Let them suffer.

I think the 960 is totally bandwidth limited, remember its got a 128 bit bus.

 

[Zion Halcyon]

I don't understand your question

I think he is Lamenting that there will not be a Black and White 3.

 

[razor1]

People seem to forget the fact that IO even stated Async was very difficult to tweak and can have the opposite effect it was intended to have.



Unreal even cautions devs on using Async:



As of now Async is not the holy grail PC gamers have been looking for in terms of noticeable performance boosts with little to no cost.

Doing base optimizations that would benefit both IHV's is a much better approach to getting performance out of one's software, as the amount of work is dropped, and it will work on both IHV's and also Intel's iGPU's.