What Does DirectCompute Really Mean For Gamers?

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We've been bugging AMD for years now, literally, to show us what GPU-accelerated software can do. Finally, the company is ready to put us in touch with ISVs in nine different segments to demonstrate how its hardware can benefit optimized applications.

Benchmark Results: Civilization 5

Lastly, we wanted to use Civilization 5 to confirm our observations with the Radeon 5870 card, although first on deck is our Radeon HD 7970 flagship.

Once more, we see the FX chip unlocking performance on AMD's fastest single-GPU graphics card that simply isn't available from the A8's four cores.

Under the higher-end processor, rendering with the addition of DirectCompute takes a 23% toll on frame rates, while with the A8-3850, the impact is only 17%. Overall, the FX gives a 41% boost to average frame speeds.

Switching our A8 config over to the Radeon HD 5870, we see DirectCompute rendering smack 19% off of our average frame rates. More significantly, compared to the Radeon HD 7970, rendering performance is cut in half. Unlike other GPGPU implementations we’ve seen in the past, where simply having support for a new technology was sufficient to get most of the benefits, the performance scaling we see under Civilization 5 plainly reveals that the more you pay, the more you get. No doubt, the hardware vendors are pleased by this.

Despite Civilization 5's allure as an entertaining game, the title does not (nor should it) aspire to photo-realism. It uses DirectX 11 as a means to achieve better performance, not crank out more lifelike visuals, and that's why it's able to churn out frame rates in excess of 500 FPS on our top-end system.

That's also why we see 85 FPS at 1920x1080 using our APU. We're happy to see this because it drives home the point that not every DirectX 11-enabled game is a performance hog trying to push the boundaries of graphics technology. An entry-level APU really can be suitable for mainstream users whose wants are more modest than the typical enthusiast.

And the composite view. Again, there are no surprises. The strength of a potent GPU looks to be the most influential factor in regular and DirectCompute-assisted rendering.

William Van Winkle
37 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Ha. Are those HL2 screenshots on page 3 lol?
    Reply
  • Khimera2000
    so... how fast is AMD's next chip??? :) a clue??? anything?
    Reply
  • de5_Roy
    would pcie 3.0 and 2x pcie 3.0 cards in cfx/sli improve direct compute performance for gaming?
    Reply
  • hunshiki
    hotsacomanHa. Are those HL2 screenshots on page 3 lol?
    THAT. F.... FENCE. :D

    Every, single, time. With every, single Source game. HL2, CSS, MODS, CSGO. It's everywhere.
    Reply
  • hunshikiTHAT. F.... FENCE. Every, single, time. With every, single Source game. HL2, CSS, MODS, CSGO. It's everywhere.
    Ha. Seriously! The source engine is what I like to call a polished turd. Somehow even though its ugly as f%$#, they still make it look acceptable...except for the fence XD
    Reply
  • theuniquegamer
    Developers need to improve the compatibility of the API for the gpus. Because the consoles used very low power outdated gpus can play latest games at good fps . But our pcs have the top notch hardware but the games are playing as almost same quality as the consoles. The GPUs in our pc has a lot horse power but we can utilize even half of it(i don't what our pc gpus are capable of)
    Reply
  • marraco
    I hate depth of field. Really hate it. I hate Metro 2033 with its DirectCompute-based depth of field filter.

    It’s unnecessary for games to emulate camera flaws, and depth of field is a limitation of cameras. The human eye is able to focus everywhere, and free to do that. Depth of field does not allow to focus where the user wants to focus, so is just an annoyance, and worse, it costs FPS.

    This chart is great. Thanks for showing it.


    It shows something out of many video cards reviews: the 7970 frequently falls under 50, 40, and even 20 FPS. That ruins the user experience. Meanwhile is hard to tell the difference between 70 and 80 FPS, is easy to spot those moments on which the card falls under 20 FPS. It’s a show stopper, and utter annoyance to spend a lot of money on the most expensive cards and then see thos 20 FPS moments.

    That’s why I prefer TechPowerup.com reviews. They show frame by frame benchmarks, and not just a meaningless FPS. TechPowerup.com is a floor over TomsHardware because of this.

    Yet that way to show GPU performance is hard to understand for humans, so that data needs to be sorted, to make it easy understandable, like this figure shows:




    Both charts show the same data, but the lower has the data sorted.

    Here we see that card B has higher lags, and FPS, and Card A is more consistent even when it haves lower FPS.
    It shows on how many frames Card B is worse that Card A, and is more intuitive and readable that the bar charts, who lose a lot of information.

    Unfortunately, no web site offers this kind of analysis for GPUs, so there is a way to get an advantage over competition.
    Reply
  • hunshiki
    I don't think you owned a modern console Theuniquegamer. Games that run fast there, would run fast on PCs (if not blazing fast), hence PCs are faster. Consoles are quite limited by hardware. Games that are demanding and slow... or they just got awesome graphics (BF3 for example), are slow on consoles too. They can rarely squeeze out 20-25 FPS usually. This happened with Crysis too. On PC? We benchmark FullHD graphics, and go for 91 fps. NINETY-ONE. Not 20. Not 25. Not even 30. And FullHD. Not 1280x720 like XBOX. (Also, on PC you have a tons of other visual improvements, that you can turn on/off. Unlike consoles.)

    So .. in short: Consoles are cheap and easy to use. You pop in the CD, you play your game. You won't be a professional FPS gamer (hence the stick), or it won't amaze you, hence the graphics. But it's easy and simple.
    Reply
  • kettu
    marracoI hate depth of field. Really hate it. I hate Metro 2033 with its DirectCompute-based depth of field filter.It’s unnecessary for games to emulate camera flaws, and depth of field is a limitation of cameras. The human eye is able to focus everywhere, and free to do that. Depth of field does not allow to focus where the user wants to focus, so is just an annoyance, and worse, it costs FPS.
    'Hate' is a bit strong word but you do have a point there. It's much more natural to focus my eyes on a certain game objects rather than my hand (i.e. turn the camera with my mouse). And you're right that it's unnecessary because I get the depth of field effect for free with my eyes allready when they're focused on a point on the screen.
    Reply
  • npyrhone
    Somehow I don't find it plausible that Tom's Hardware has *literally* been bugging AMD for years - to any end (no pun inteded). Figuratively, perhaps?
    Reply