Asyncronous Shaders

[Ryoutarou97]

So I remember seeing something about AMD cards having async shaders and that boosting performance up to "47%" with DX12's support for them. Why is this not a huge effin' deal? Let's assume they only boost performance 20% on average. That's 20 percent. That's like making that 280x compete with the 970. The 290x would go head to head with the 980. Am I missing something about this? Because it seems to me that this should be huge. Really really huge.

 

http://www.maximumpc.com/async-shaders-will-allow-gpus-live-their-full-potential-says-amd-2015/

http://wccftech.com/amd-directx-12-async-shaders-multithreaded-command-buffer-dx12/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9124/amd-dives-deep-on-asynchronous-shading

[jhurst117]

AMD is really only brought up when they are being thrown under the bus by intel/Nvidia enthusiasts but this is only what amd has coming out with dx12 im sure Nvidia has something aswell to "boost" performance and improve shaders and what not I personally have an amd/intel machine so seeing team red do these performance increases helps them stay competitive I just cant wait to see what dx12 brings.

[Ryoutarou97]

AMD is really only brought up when they are being thrown under the bus by intel/Nvidia enthusiasts but this is only what amd has coming out with dx12 im sure Nvidia has something aswell to "boost" performance and improve shaders and what not I personally have an amd/intel machine so seeing team red do these performance increases helps them stay competitive I just cant wait to see what dx12 brings.

Maybe Nvidia does, but I find it hard to see them just casually standing by while AMD is all "47% improvements over here, guys. That's almost 50. 50% improvements guys. Oveeeeer here."

That's like AMD saying: Our cards will be 20% (or 47) better then. Someone who might buy an Nvidia card sees this and instead goes with AMD. This strikes me as the sort of thing that Nvidia would want to respond to.

[jhurst117]

Maybe Nvidia does, but I find it hard to see them just casually standing by while AMD is all "47% improvements over here, guys. That's almost 50. 50% improvements guys. Oveeeeer here."

That's like AMD saying: Our cards will be 20% (or 47) better then. Someone who might buy an Nvidia card sees this and instead goes with AMD. This strikes me as the sort of thing that Nvidia would want to respond to.

Lets say nvidia has already maxed out what they can do as of now this will push amd cards either to exactly the same performance as nvidia cards or far above them like with dx11 series Nvidia cards trumphing amd maybe this time around amd will have the upper hand we'll all see in the months to come

[Manny Calavera]

Newest cards on both sides, nvidia have 32 compute units while amd only 8.

So nvidia has upper hand here.

 

If both implement shaders ofc.

[xAcid9]

Both side support it.

 

AMD GCN 1.2 (285) 1 Graphics + 8 ACEs = 64+ Compute (64+ queues)

AMD GCN 1.1 (290 Series) 1 Graphics + 8 ACEs = 64+ Compute (64+ queues)

AMD GCN 1.1 (260 Series) 1 Graphics + 2 ACEs = 16+ Compute (16+ queues)

AMD GCN 1.0+ (Kabini) 1 Graphics + 4 ACEs = 8+ Compute (8+ queues)

AMD GCN 1.0 (7000/200 Series) 1 Graphics + 2 ACEs = 4+ Compute (4+ queues)

NVIDIA Maxwell 2 (900 Series) 1 Graphics + 1 Compute = 32 Compute (32 queues)

NVIDIA Maxwell 1 (750 Series) 1 Graphics = 32 Compute (32 queues)

NVIDIA Kepler GK110 (780/Titan) 1 Graphics = 32 Compute (32 queues

[ansauri]

So I remember seeing something about AMD cards having async shaders and that boosting performance up to "47%" with DX12's support for them. Why is this not a huge effin' deal? Let's assume they only boost performance 20% on average. That's 20 percent. That's like making that 280x compete with the 970. The 290x would go head to head with the 980. Am I missing something about this? Because it seems to me that this should be huge. Really really huge.

 

http://www.maximumpc.com/async-shaders-will-allow-gpus-live-their-full-potential-says-amd-2015/

http://wccftech.com/amd-directx-12-async-shaders-multithreaded-command-buffer-dx12/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9124/amd-dives-deep-on-asynchronous-shading

 

Nvidia also supports it, so it won't be AMD magically be boosted. Also, Async compute is only one part of the process of the frame rendering. Gpus will see a big boost if the game heavily depends of it, but if not, that extra power won't help if the gpu lacks performance in other areas.

 

For the moment, the only example we have of a game using async compute in PC is Thief. You can check latest reviews of this game and the r9 380 which has one of the best async compute performance. It barely surpasses the 280x and cannot reach the gtx 780.

 

 

Newest cards on both sides, nvidia have 32 compute units while amd only 8.

So nvidia has upper hand here.

 

If both implement shaders ofc.

 

That's not entirely true. Nvidia computes cannot handle more than 1 queue at the same time, while AMD ones are able to handle 8.

 

R9 290/x, r9 285, r9 380, r9 390/x and Fury are able to handle 64 queues. HD 7000, r9 260/x, r9 270x, r9 280/x, r9 360/x and r9 370/x can handle 16 queues. Nvidia series 600/700 can only handle 1 queue. And gtx 780/titan and all Maxwell can handle 32 queues.

[Ryoutarou97]

Nvidia also supports it, so it won't be AMD magically be boosted. Also, Async compute is only one part of the process of the frame rendering. Gpus will see a big boost if the game heavily depends of it, but if not, that extra power won't help if the gpu lacks performance in other areas.

 

For the moment, the only example we have of a game using async compute in PC is Thief. You can check latest reviews of this game and the r9 380 which has one of the best async compute performance. It barely surpasses the 280x and cannot reach the gtx 780.

 

 

 

That's not entirely true. Nvidia computes cannot handle more than 1 queue at the same time, while AMD ones are able to handle 8.

 

R9 290/x, r9 285, r9 380, r9 390/x and Fury are able to handle 64 queues. HD 7000, r9 260/x, r9 270x, r9 280/x, r9 360/x and r9 370/x can handle 16 queues. Nvidia series 600/700 can only handle 1 queue. And gtx 780/titan and all Maxwell can handle 32 queues.

Oh, okay, makes sense now. What kind of effect do queues have on async performance?

[ansauri]

Oh, okay, makes sense now. What kind of effect do queues have on async performance?

 

Queues in gpus are like threads in cpus. In fact, what AMD has is a sort of hypethreading.

[Ryoutarou97]

Queues in gpus are like threads in cpus. In fact, what AMD has is a sort of hypethreading.

Thanks for the explanations! Sort of the last question, if AMD essentially has 32 hyperthreaded queues, will they see performance like in a heavily threaded workload seeing 20% improvements from HT?