Project CARS devs address AMD performance issues, AMD drivers to blame entirely, PhysX runs on CPU only, no GPU involvement whatsoever.

[Dabombinable]

If I only had an R9 290X alongside my GTX 970, then I'd compare the performance of the 290X to that of the 970 in AMD and Nvidia optimized games.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

because normally on most games the amd card would have beaten the nvidia card. a r9 290 run games better than a gtx 770

why can't it be that some games are better suited for different architecture ?  also, ofcourse R290 runs games better than a 770 what am i missing here? 

[RivaLCF]

I'm getting quite horrific performance on my R9 290 right now. 

 

Not only do I have to drop my settings to a mix of low/medium, I also get serious instability in performance at times.

 

When I'm doing a race at SPA with 10-12 AI opponents the game will start stuttering, going slow-motion and fast forwarding in uncontrollable fashion and even the sound will start making horrible sounds, like it gets stuck aswell. The whole game becomes a complete unstable mess.  

 

It is a surprise to me that not everyone is having this issue. 

 

I'm the type of guy that keeps all of his drivers updated and the PC as clean as possible aswell. I rarely ever have problems in games besides this game. 

 

Specs are as follows:

Intel i5-4690

Fatal1ty H97 Performance

Kingston HyperX Black series DDR3-1600

XFX R9 290 Core Edition 4GB

Antec HCG-620w

[patrickjp93]

I'm getting quite horrific performance on my R9 290 right now. 

 

Not only do I have to drop my settings to a mix of low/medium, I also get serious instability in performance at times.

 

When I'm doing a race at SPA with 10-12 AI opponents the game will start stuttering, going slow-motion and fast forwarding in uncontrollable fashion and even the sound will start making horrible sounds, like it gets stuck aswell. The whole game becomes a complete unstable mess.  

 

It is a surprise to me that not everyone is having this issue. 

 

I'm the type of guy that keeps all of his drivers updated and the PC as clean as possible aswell. I rarely ever have problems in games besides this game. 

 

Specs are as follows:

Intel i5-4690

Fatal1ty H97 Performance

Kingston HyperX Black series DDR3-1600

XFX R9 290 Core Edition 4GB

Antec HCG-620w

Clearly it's the low MHz RAM. You must have at least 3GHz RAM to run this game.

[RivaLCF]

I already overclocked RAM it to 5.9 Ghz with my H97 motherboard. My FPS then skyrockets to 225 fps in some bits and then back to -58 fps in some moments so annoying. 

 

Anyways, the total instability is caused by V-Sync. When I turn it off It's fine but looks nowhere near as smooth without it. 

[ivan134]

why can't it be that some games are better suited for different architecture ?  also, ofcourse R290 runs games better than a 770 what am i missing here? 

Please educate the rest of us about how Project Cars is better on Nvidia's architecture.

[mr moose]

Please educate the rest of us about how Project Cars is better on Nvidia's architecture.

 

He's asking a question not making a statement.  It would be nice if someone could actually answer it.  I guess people don't understand the problem as well as they make out.

[Guest Kloaked]

why can't it be that some games are better suited for different architecture ? also, ofcourse R290 runs games better than a 770 what am i missing here?

In this case, it shouldn't be biased toward different architectures since there isn't an enormous generational gap in the concern, like putting a Radeon 5770 against a Gtx 970.

People are hearing through someone else that project cars is running god awful on Radeon cards but as it turns out, which was a smaller suspicion of mine, that some of the kiddies are blowing everything out of proportion since project cars is an Nvidia title, therefore it must run bad on Radeon cards. On a previous reply I made, I posted evidence provided to me by another member of LTT that it's totally not the case and everything is fine for the most part (you'd need to read the post to get the while story).

[Takata]

This reminds me of http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/326159-ex-nvidia-engineer-every-game-ships-broken-we-fix-it-in-drivers/.

 

I'm guessing that AMD is more stretched for human resources than Nvidia for whatever reason. Hence, they can't even spare a few hardware engineers to help develop Project Cars.

 

Kinda raises the question of how much responsibility AMD or Nvidia have for helping developers of individual games?

[TwistedDictator]

If I only had an R9 290X alongside my GTX 970, then I'd compare the performance of the 290X to that of the 970 in AMD and Nvidia optimized games.

 

I have both. Even a 980ti. If you can get enough people that want to see that, ill start doing some benchmarks.

[grayperview]

I "borrowed" the game to see what the fuss was about, on my 2x7970's there is significant frame drops in vsync at the start of races with 18 cars around me, once i have crashed as all the cars have gone passed me the game runs at a solid 60fps for me.

 

Overall not overly impressed with the game, and ill stick to forza on xbox 360 for my driving game needs.

[NateGSR117]

I don't even know what to say. That just excuse for poor work in my opinion. Other games work fine with AMD drivers.

[ManWithBeard1990]

It does.

GPU access over DX11 is a huge problem so they need to do it on the driver level.

AMD even talked about it in their Mantle showcases.

Of course not every dev will use Low Level access but at least in AAA titles the issue should be minimal with DX12.

Realistically though lower level access doesn't fix it because there's not necessarily more incentive for them to write different code for AMD and nVidia. They could've written different high level dx11 renderers for AMD and nVidia if they wanted to as it's not too hard to determine what GPU is present but they decided not to.

[Ialyrn]

This is a copy and paste of a posting I made an another forum with regards to  the current issues with Pcars.

 

 

 

Ive been away for the weekend visiting family, only just got back a couple of hours ago; and catching up on the game and tech news. And right here are my thoughts to some of the things going on with regards to Pcars.

Not a surprise to me that people are having issues with project cars, I kept warning people that it wasn't the game they was expecting. But would they listen to me? Nope. These bugs have been in the game since the first playable dev releases where given out to all of us who put into the crowd funding. And this is exactly why I have not used my discount on the full release. 

First there is the fact that cars still shoot of into space, sometimes on their own while driving in a straight line. Other times as the result of a crash. The AI still have a tendency to wipe out the entire field, and this can be better or worse depending on the type of cars been used in the race. This is often worse in the faster Formula and LMP type cars. Not to mention the issues with controller inputs not been read properly by the game. Those are not hte only bugs in this game either, the list is extensive. It is just as riddled with bugs as the last dev release I played before steam preloading had started on the release version.

I am not saying here that P cars has nothing good to offer, because with certain things the game just clicks and it is perfect. And when in those moments, it is hands down one the best racing games out there. But those moments are so far and few between, it just makes it a chore to play it. Its also impossibly pretty with the graphics, and the FFB is some of the best I have ever felt in a racing game to date. Overall though, those good points can not make up for the glaring issues that are still in this game. Not for me anyway.


If SMS ever fix these issues, I will gladly part with my money for the full release title. But now there is also the fact they are outright blaming AMD for driver issues on PC. I am sorry, but that is just a poor show. Firstly, keep that stuff between yourselves and AMD, SMS. And lets not forget here that there was a massive public backing for this game, and along with that came a massive community of pc sim racers; with a massive verity of differing hardware configurations. Both running Intel and AMD CPUS, and AMD and Nvidia GPU's. Only reason this game is having issues at the moment, is because SMS allowed those issues to remain in the game. 

Perhaps I am been over critical towards SMS and Pcars, but then I did put forward my own money to help this game be built in the first place; and I had high hopes it would be great. And even though I could only put forward a small amount of cash at that time, I remember feeling proud of helping a dev create what should have been an awesome game in the genre I love the most. I just feel severely let down by SMS at this moment in time.


Anyway, I will see what happens in time. Perhaps SMS will surprise me, and they will fix this game up properly. And then I can have the piece of virtual driving and racing heaven that Pcars should have been by now.

[xAcid9]

Found the problem. Physx. 

 

/closethread

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Found the problem. Physx. 

 

/closethread

Physx is the problem that game runs better on nvidia ? cool

[sgloux3470]

If I remember correctly, it's very difficult for AMD to optimize for gameworks.  It's why Nvidia started pushing it in the first place. 

 

 

What's wrong with this, exactly?  Performance across the board is mediocre but no doubt you can lower settings for that.  But in terms of cards stacking up where they should this is exactly what I would expect between AMD and Nvidia.

 

 

Also lol is the original Titan really a 30 FPS card 2 years after release?  Man, I feel bad for people who bought one.  

 

It's pretty clear Nvidia only cared about Maxwell optimization.  Must suck to still have a Kepler card.

 

 

This chart looks almost as abysmal as AC:Unity.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Physx is the problem that game runs better on nvidia ? cool

Yea physx is a problem since amd cards can't render physx effects, it will be loaded on to the cpu. Turning the effects off will take the load off the cpu.

[ivan134]

If I remember correctly, it's very difficult for AMD to optimize for gameworks.  It's why Nvidia started pushing it in the first place. 

 

 

 

What's wrong with this, exactly?  Performance across the board is mediocre but no doubt you can lower settings for that.  But in terms of cards stacking up where they should this is exactly what I would expect between AMD and Nvidia.

 

 

Also lol is the original Titan really a 30 FPS card 2 years after release?  Man, I feel bad for people who bought one.  

 

It's pretty clear Nvidia only cared about Maxwell optimization.  Must suck to still have a Kepler card.

 

 

This chart looks almost as abysmal as AC:Unity.

Be careful. Nvidia is not going to like you pointing out shitty support for their older cards barely a year after the ones they just released.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Yea physx is a problem since amd cards can't render physx effects, it will be loaded on to the cpu. Turning the effects off will take the load off the cpu.

that's amd's department to deal with you can't say you hate nvidia for game companies implementing the features such as physx, you're blaming nvidia for inventing physx because amd cards don't have them? that does not make any sense, iirc AMD has their hair Tessellation technology they used on Lara croft, no one from nvidia complained its not on nvidia did they ? 

[Opcode]

that's amd's department to deal with you can't say you hate nvidia for game companies implementing the features such as physx, you're blaming nvidia for inventing physx because amd cards don't have them? that does not make any sense, iirc AMD has their hair Tessellation technology they used on Lara croft, no one from nvidia complained its not on nvidia did they ? 

Actually the problem is Nvidia locks down their frameworks to their GPU architecture only. In order for AMD based systems to run it they have to run it on the CPU which is multiple times slower and eats up a ton of CPU cycles causing lower frame rates (physics are extremely heavy workloads). As to where AMD has their own frameworks like TressFX which will run on both AMD and Nvidia hardware (see Tomb Raider). The problem is Nvidia locking down their software trying to reel in customers with their "exclusive" features that not many games use anymore (probably for that reason). If I was to make a big 3D game I personally would use TressFX not because it's an AMD product but simply because I know both Nvidia and AMD powered consumers will have the same gameplay experience.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Actually the problem is Nvidia locks down their frameworks to their GPU architecture only. In order for AMD based systems to run it they have to run it on the CPU which is multiple times slower and eats up a ton of CPU cycles causing lower frame rates (physics are extremely heavy workloads). As to where AMD has their own frameworks like TressFX which will run on both AMD and Nvidia hardware (see Tomb Raider). The problem is Nvidia locking down their software trying to reel in customers with their "exclusive" features that not many games use anymore (probably for that reason). If I was to make a big 3D game I personally would use TressFX not because it's an AMD product but simply because I know both Nvidia and AMD powered consumers will have the same gameplay experience.

that's called competition, AMD better come up with something other than a let down free sync, and arguing over gameworks is just pointless 

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

that's amd's department to deal with you can't say you hate nvidia for game companies implementing the features such as physx, you're blaming nvidia for inventing physx because amd cards don't have them? that does not make any sense, iirc AMD has their hair Tessellation technology they used on Lara croft, no one from nvidia complained its not on nvidia did they ?

I'd suggest reading my post carefully before you throw accusations at me. In no way did I blame nvidia for inventing physx. It's more of a game problem if the developers decide to use physx for the crash debris and have no option to turn that off. I don't give a shit about physx. I'll only start giving a shit when physx degrades performance. Not long ago a benchmark for monster hunter online came out and you could see hairworks, physx, clothworks (whatever its called) all over the benchmark. Needless to say my 280x didn't do well and a 660 ti managed to beat my 280x. There was no way to turn off the effects in the benchmark. I'm only stating physx will effect performance on amd systems.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

that's called competition, AMD better come up with something other than a let down free sync, and arguing over gameworks is just pointless

That's more like being a dick to consumers

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

That's more like being a dick to consumers

so, your idea being game companies implement new features that other companies don't and so the people who invented that feature is a dick.