Why you should always keep your GPU drivers (and benchmark scores) updated xD

[dragonhart6505]

My 4gb Armor RX 580 beat out the same 8gb variant on Superposition at lower clocks and a hefty -100mV undervolt at less than 90% fan speed. The drivers of the 8gb Armor were from less than a year ago.

It's not worth bragging over...1672/1673 out of 1777 total submissions isn't a fantastic score, but for the hardware I've got I won't complain lmao

[TetraSky]

Yes, at 1080p. Now move to 4k and suddenly you're at the bottom of the barrel compared to the 8GB card, simply due to not having enough vram.

[driftz240]

1 hour ago, TetraSky said:

Yes, at 1080p. Now move tom 4k and suddenly you're at the bottom of the barrel compared to the 8GB card, simply due to not having enough vram.

You'd be at the bottom of the barrel regardless, its a 580 

[dragonhart6505]

2 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Yes, at 1080p. Now move tom 4k and suddenly you're at the bottom of the barrel compared to the 8GB card, simply due to not having enough vram.

why would i do 4k? its a 580, the price-performance 1080p king 

[driftz240]

1 hour ago, dragonhart6505 said:

its a 580, the price-performance 1080p king

aaahhhhhh I think that title goes to the 570 lol

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 hours ago, dragonhart6505 said:

My 4gb Armor RX 580 beat out the same 8gb variant on Superposition at lower clocks and a hefty -100mV undervolt at less than 90% fan speed. The drivers of the 8gb Armor were from less than a year ago.

It's not worth bragging over...1672/1673 out of 1777 total submissions isn't a fantastic score, but for the hardware I've got I won't complain lmao

It'd be more interesting to see if the driver improvements happened continuously, or if it happened at one version and then stopped. Most cases for drivers improving application performance, it's typically for relevant applications and rarely improves performance for older ones unless they're still popular.

 

4 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Yes, at 1080p. Now move tom 4k and suddenly you're at the bottom of the barrel compared to the 8GB card, simply due to not having enough vram.

I've yet to see a case, at least with modern graphics cards, where "not having enough VRAM" contributed to significant performance degradation over simply the GPU not being powerful enough. That is, in a lot of cases I've seen, performance still degraded linearly when the expectation is performance should be a lot worse.

[dragonhart6505]

3 hours ago, driftz240 said:

aaahhhhhh I think that title goes to the 570 lol

not when you get your 580 for $90 used

[dragonhart6505]

2 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

It'd be more interesting to see if the driver improvements happened continuously, or if it happened at one version and then stopped. Most cases for drivers improving application performance, it's typically for relevant applications and rarely improves performance for older ones unless they're still popular.

 

I've yet to see a case, at least with modern graphics cards, where "not having enough VRAM" contributed to significant performance degradation over simply the GPU not being powerful enough. That is, in a lot of cases I've seen, performance still degraded linearly when the expectation is performance should be a lot worse.

i can do 1440p/60/High without much issue in most titles. but yea, performance on AMD hasnt gotten much better since probably when that November driver was out. though i can say that recently ive noticed slightly better overall performance and stability on my RX 580 with the recent driver update. nothing major, but at least 5%

[Princess Luna]

2 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I've yet to see a case, at least with modern graphics cards, where "not having enough VRAM" contributed to significant performance degradation over simply the GPU not being powerful enough. That is, in a lot of cases I've seen, performance still degraded linearly when the expectation is performance should be a lot worse.

Hardware Unboxed did do an extensive testing with the GTX 1060 3GB at 1440p to push the it, pretty much every single game tested only saw around 4fps~5fps difference with Deus Ex Mankind Divided, a very GPU intensive game being the worse case of all:

 

 

Which leads us to believe the VRAM would only matter on extremely specific cases.

 

Their findings also points to the need of having at minimum 8GB of system RAM but preferably 16GB since the GPU will offload stuff into system memory as the 3GB buffer gets max out and this extra step in latency and lower memory speeds would likely the sole reason for these lower numbers however another major issue when using the 1060 for this testing is the fact it also features less CUDA Cores which is likely the reason why the greatest majority of games saw a 4fps~5fps decrease in average.

 

Bottom line is that 4GB of VRAM variant of the RX570 and RX 580 for 1080p is indeed sufficient for say 95% of cases/games and by the time the 8GB one would make any sensible difference the GPU itself would be far too outdated.

[dragonhart6505]

8 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

Hardware Unboxed did do an extensive testing with the GTX 1060 3GB at 1440p to push the it, pretty much every single game tested only saw around 4fps~5fps difference with Deus Ex Mankind Divided, a very GPU intensive game being the worse case of all:

 

 

Which leads us to believe the VRAM would only matter on extremely specific cases.

 

Their findings also points to the need of having at minimum 8GB of system RAM but preferably 16GB since the GPU will offload stuff into system memory as the 3GB buffer gets max out and this extra step in latency and lower memory speeds would likely the sole reason for these lower numbers however another major issue when using the 1060 for this testing is the fact it also features less CUDA Cores which is likely the reason why the greatest majority of games saw a 4fps~5fps decrease in average.

 

Bottom line is that 4GB of VRAM variant of the RX570 and RX 580 for 1080p is indeed sufficient for say 95% of cases/games and by the time the 8GB one would make any sensible difference the GPU itself would be far too outdated.

quite right dude. and the 1060 is essentially the equivalent of the 580 with MAYBE 2-5% better performance AT BEST. i get nearly the same performance in 1440p as i do 1080p at the same settings in something like, say, Rainbow Six Siege and CoD Black Ops 4. its really just up to what youd prefer to have: a constant, reliable 60fps or intermittent drops below 50 on occasion.

ill happily take the drops for not having to use AA filters thanks

[Mira Yurizaki]

13 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

-Snip-

I had some reservations before, but I started seriously questioning this when I saw TechSpot's Far Cry 5 benchmarking article

 

So here we have VRAM usage on maximum quality at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K

 

So clearly this game "needs" about 4GB of VRAM at 4K right?

 

Then I look at the GT 1030 struggling along at 1080p at 19 FPS average, 15 FPS 99 precentile. Then at 4K it's gone down to 5FPS average, 4FPS 99 percentile. That's a linear drop-off as expected if VRAM isn't a problem. So how is a GT 1030 with 2GB of VRAM surviving that well at a resolution that supposedly "needs" double the VRAM?

Edited July 19, 2019 by Mira Yurizaki

[dragonhart6505]

3 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I had some reservations before, but I started seriously questioning this when I saw TechSpot's Far Cry 5 benchmarking article

 

So here we have VRAM usage on maximum quality at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K

 

So clearly this game "needs" about 4GB of VRAM at 4K right?

 

Then I look at the GT 1030 struggling along at 1080p at 19 FPS average, 15 FPS 99 precentile. Then at 4K it's gone down to 5FPS average, 4FPS 99 percentile. That's a linear drop-off as expected if VRAM isn't a problem. So how is a GT 1030 with 2GB of VRAM surviving that well at a resolution that supposedly "needs" double the VRAM?

VRAM isnt quite as important except to keep textures in memory without having to reload them everytime its called upon again. with more physical RAM, those textures can load faster since its being called upon by the game to RAM in the first place. ive noticed this in Black Ops 4 before and after upgrading my RAM to 16gb from 8gb. massive stutters if i were to go over my GPU VRAM allotment. after upgrading RAM, no more stutters and i can max the game out while keeping nearly 60fps all the time. HOWEVER, ill notice textures have unloaded and pop back into full resolution when turning. most noticeable on ground textures, like in Blood of the Dead, where the ground is ridiculously textured with virtual cracks and rocks. the texture will go totally grey for a second or so before becoming the texture it should be...but only in patches, sporadically around the area. as soon as its out of view it unloads again until i turn back to look at that area.

my performance is affected between 1080p/1440p by maybe a 10fps drop off at the higher resolution. worth it to turn textures down to keep VRAM usage under 4gb so the textures at least dont pop in like they do

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, dragonhart6505 said:

-Snip-

Yeah, that's my thinking. VRAM is only important for keeping things the GPU absolutely needs to generate an image, like render target data and such. Other things can be loaded in at lower quality and enhanced later when they eventually get there.

 

But we don't have a way to measure what's actually necessary.

[dragonhart6505]

Just now, Mira Yurizaki said:

Yeah, that's my thinking. VRAM is only important for keeping things the GPU absolutely needs to generate an image, like render target data and such. Other things can be loaded in at lower quality and enhanced later when they eventually get there.

 

But we don't have a way to actually measure what's necessary.

only by visual. cant really monitor it at the raw level. like i said, max out a game like Black Ops 4 at high resolution over your GPU VRAM usage. youll see what im talking about. if a texture is too large, itll unload from the VRAM and have to reload when it comes back into view. there are things like geometry and collision that obviously NEED to be there at all times, even if its not in view. but textures can come and go. if a texture is predicted to be around a corner or through glass or a wall close enough to the entity (your player) it can load in out of sight so its not so ugly when the entity (you) gets to that point. but if the texture is too large (ie 1440p/Very High setting) then youve run out of VRAM for your immediate surroundings within view and distant objects/entities/textures can just come and go at a whim without reason or predictability. thats how i understand it from experience.

the actual DISPLAY RESOLUTION is what tears up your performance. you need the horsepower to push more pixels. in the case of 4k vs 1080 its 2x the total pixel count. no amount of overclock is gonna fix that. you need more and more powerful shader cores (or CUDA cores in Nvidias case) to keep up with that pixel count.

that being said, i dont mind 30fps in 4k if i can keep it stable sometimes depending on what im doing. not the first time ive done so, even in Black Ops 4 which has a heavy load on the GPU at 100% just sitting in the friggin MENUS lmfao

[driftz240]

53 minutes ago, dragonhart6505 said:

not when you get your 580 for $90 used

Daaaaamn 

[dragonhart6505]

Just now, driftz240 said:

Daaaaamn 

ikr?! waiting to see if the same dude puts his 1070ti that he upgraded to from the 580 on Offerup anytime soon, what kinda deal i can get off him from that lmfao

[driftz240]

Just now, dragonhart6505 said:

ikr?! waiting to see if the same dude puts his 1070ti that he upgraded to from the 580 on Offerup anytime soon, what kinda deal i can get off him from that lmfao

Dude theres never any good hardware deals in my area, notta one. I search craigslist, letgo, offerup, everything.

[dragonhart6505]

6 minutes ago, driftz240 said:

Dude theres never any good hardware deals in my area, notta one. I search craigslist, letgo, offerup, everything.

same brother. i got LUCKY, checking every day for ANYTHING. i keep seeing 8350 + GTX 1060/570 or Ryzen 2400g + 1050ti systems on FB market for like 750 and laugh my ass off. theres a guy in my city selling a Ryzen 7 2700x and 1050ti 4gb for $1000 and will not lower the price...no peripherals or monitor.

the system ive got posted above i got with originally a 1050ti 2gb for $425 after tax...probably more than i should have spent for it but its a damn good performer. found a sucker to buy the 1050ti for $100, the RX 580 the same day for $90 so $10 profit lmao. recently put it into a Fractal Design Define Mini Silent case and its a dream.

 

heres what the system can do at 1440p/High. ignore the stutters, i recently upgraded to 16gb of RAM and completely eliminated them. smooth ~60fps all the time with drops down to maybe 55fps for a second or so. not bad for a $400 system  : 

 

[driftz240]

4 minutes ago, dragonhart6505 said:

heres what the system can do at 1440p/High. ignore the stutters, i recently upgraded to 16gb of RAM and completely eliminated them. smooth ~60fps all the time with drops down to maybe 55fps for a second or so. not bad for a $400 system  : 

Noice my dude

[Deadsies]

Vega 56 the thread. Reviewers need to put a date on their individual benchmarks for real. All older Vega 56 benchmarks are false. 

 

 

 

 

[dragonhart6505]

6 minutes ago, Deadsies said:

Vega 56 the thread

i have absolutely no idea what you mean by this or why you mention the Vega 56 at all. this is an RX 580, not even on the same level as a Vega 56...not by much anyway

[Deadsies]

Because your thread is about how AMDs driver improvements/updates make them “stronger” right? AMDs Vega 56 is another great example of that.

[dragonhart6505]

4 minutes ago, Deadsies said:

Because your thread is about how AMDs driver improvements/updates make them “stronger” right? AMDs Vega 56 is another great example of that.

well...yea. but this was simply a showcase/example of the performance improvement over driver updates between 2 cards of the same model but different spec. so the Vega 56 doesnt fit here. but i see what youre saying. Vega 56 reviews should be updated since AMD has in fact made improvements to their platform overall. theyre getting there, slowly but surely

but i dont have or want a Vega 56. if i upgrade eventually in the future, itll be whatever is strongest in my budget availability. RTX doesnt interest me in the slightest, but if i can afford it ill get it simply for the performance upgrade. maybe the 5700xt if it comes to that even