GRAPHICS CORE NEXT BETTER PREPARED FOR DIRECTX 12 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES AMD RADEON GFX & DIRECTX 12 ROBERT HALLOCK AMD TECHNICAL MARKETING
GAME DEVS & ASYNC SHADERS DAN BAKER, PARTNER, OXIDE GAMES I ve heard of developers getting +30% GPU performance by using Async [Shading]. [ ]it could end up being pretty disruptive in a year or so as these GCN built and optimized engines start coming to the PC. 2 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
ASYNC SHADERS WHAT ARE THEY? HIGHER FPS Breaks complex graphics workloads into many parallel tasks Idle GPU resources do work instead of waiting their turn Parallel workloads = jobs finish faster = more performance Increasing granularity of the multi threading improves performance GREAT FOR VR More parallelism = lower latency = more responsive VR IMAGE QUALITY GPU PERFORMANCE Opens up GPU resources for free graphical effects that don t compromise performance 3 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
THE DIRECTX 11 GRAPHICS BOTTLENECK CREATE SHADOWS UPLOAD DATA FROM PROCESSOR TIME COMPRESS TEXTURES GENERATE REFLECTIONS ( ENVIRONMENT MAPPING ) BUFFER LIGHT/MATERIAL INTERACTIONS UPLOAD 2 nd LIGHTING PASS PHYSICS SIM POST PROCESS COMPUTE, & MEMORY USE DIFFERENT GPU RESOURCES SO WHY MUST THESE JOBS WAIT TO RUN IN ORDER? 4 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES * Chart for illustrative purposes only.
ASYNCHRONOUS SHADING IN DIRECTX 12 CREATE SHADOWS BUFFER LIGHT/MATERIAL INTERACTIONS GENERATE REFLECTIONS ( ENVIRONMENT MAPPING ) SECOND LIGHTING PASS POST PROCESS UPLOAD DATA FROM PROCESSOR UPLOAD DATA FROM PROCESSOR RENDER TIME SAVED LATENCY FPS COMPRESS TEXTURES COMPRESS TEXTURES PHYSICS SIMULATION TIME THEY RE PARALLEL IN DIRECTX 12 HIGHER FPS RESPONSIVE VR LOW INPUT LAG 5 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES * Chart for illustrative purposes only.
GAME DEVS ON ASYNC SHADERS With async shaders, we can fill parts of the GPU that [would] otherwise be forced to sit idle. It's one of those features we wish we had on every GPU. DAN BAKER, PARTNER, OXIDE GAMES [Async shading] can be used to add more game features without affecting performance or to increase efficiency by performing existing work in parallel with rendering. JOHN KLOETZLI, PRINCIPAL GFX DEV, FIRAXIS GAMES On The Tomorrow Children, the flexibility offered by moving the bulk of our rendering work to compute was just too great not to take advantage of. [ ] [Async shading] really made a lot of things possible that would have been incredibly difficult otherwise. JAYMIN KESSLER, SENIOR PROGRAMMER, Q GAMES 6 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
PRESS ON ASYNC SHADING It turns out that NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture has an Achilles' heel after all, which tilts the scales in favor of competing AMD Graphics CoreNext architecture better prepared for DirectX 12. TechPowerUP Oxide s developer also revealed that NVIDIA s Maxwell does not support natively Async Compute, and that NVIDIA asked Oxide to disable it for its graphics cards. DSOGaming [ ]AMDcardshavebeenbuilttotake advantage of DirectX 12 s features, mainly thanks to Async Compute which should become more prevalent in the next couple of years. WCCFtech 7 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
WHAT ABOUT NVIDIA MAXWELL? Curiously, [NVIDIA s] driver reported [async shading] was functional but attempting to use it was an unmitigated disaster. Ashes of the Singularity Development Team AFAIK, Maxwell doesn t support Async Compute, at least not natively. We disabled it at the request of Nvidia, as it was much slower to try to use it then to not. 8 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES http://wccftech.com/oxide games dev replies ashes singularity controversy/
ASYNCHRONOUS COMPUTE ENGINES GRAPHICS CORE NEXT: HARDWARE FOR ASYNC SHADING These are Asynchronous Compute Engines Every GCN based graphics chip has several ACEs are hardware accelerators for asynchronous shading in DX12 PC games Only GCN has support for asynchronous shading AMD Radeon R9 390X Graphics Card 9 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
DIRECTX 12 GAMES & HARDWARE GAMES AND HARDWARE 10 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
OPTIMIZED FOR GRAPHICS CORE NEXT Built with the Dawn Engine Supports DirectX 12 Features TressFX Hair 3.0 More features TBA Watch the trailer Visit the website 11 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
OPTIMIZED FOR GRAPHICS CORE NEXT Built with the Nitrous Engine DirectX 12 Capabilities Multi threaded Command Buffers Increases multi core CPU utilization Async Shaders Increases GPU utilization Explicit Frame Management Reduces frame latency Custom Memory Manager Eliminates microstutter See the gameplay Visit the website Read the blog 12 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
ASHES OF THE SINGULARITY ULTRAHD 4K, MEDIUM PRESET, DIRECTX 12 AMD Radeon R9 Fury X GTX 980 Ti AMD Radeon R9 390X GTX 980 AMD Radeon R9 390 GTX 970 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Average FPS 13 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES SYSTEM CONFIG: Intel Core i7 5960X Gigabyte X99 UD4 16GBG DDR4 2666 Windows 10 x64 AMD Catalyst 15.20.1061 Beta 3 NVIDIA 355.60 WHQL
ASHES OF THE SINGULARITY 1440p, MEDIUM & HIGH PRESETS, DIRECTX 12 AMD Radeon R9 Fury X GTX 980 Ti AMD Radeon R9 390X GTX 980 AMD Radeon R9 390 GTX 970 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Average FPS HIGH MEDIUM 14 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES SYSTEM CONFIG: Intel Core i7 5960X Gigabyte X99 UD4 16GBG DDR4 2666 Windows 10 x64 AMD Catalyst 15.20.1061 Beta 3 NVIDIA 355.60 WHQL
API Overhead Feature Test Supports DirectX 12, Mantle & DirectX 11 Evaluates a GPU s geometric throughput ( scene detail ) at >30 FPS Multi threaded command buffers See the trailer Visit the website Read the technical guide 15 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES
3DMARK API OVERHEAD FEATURE TEST FULL DGPU STACK PERFORMANCE GEOMETRIC SCENE DETAIL AT 1080P AMD Radeon R9 Fury X GTX 980 Ti AMD Radeon R9 Fury (Asus) AMD Radeon R9 390X GTX 980 AMD Radeon R9 390 GTX 970 AMD Radeon R9 380 GTX 960 AMD Radeon R7 370 4GB GTX 750 Ti AMD Radeon R7 360 GTX 750 1.0 Mil. 4.0 Mil. 7.0 Mil. 10.0 Mil. 13.0 Mil. 16.0 Mil. 19.0 Mil. Polygons/sec @ >30 FPS 16 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES Core i7 5960X, Gigabyte X99 UD4, 16GB DDR4 2666, Windows 10 x64 (Build 10240), AMD Catalyst driver 15.20 Beta 19, ForceWare 353.62. DirectX 12 multi threaded. 1080p resolution.
ADDITIONAL CONTENT Material Headline Source Video AMD Simplified: Async Shading YouTube Article Article AMD s DirectX 12 Advantage Explained GCN Architecture More Friendly to Parallelism Than Maxwell Lack of Async Compute on Maxwell Makes AMD GCN Better Prepared for DX12 Community NV GPUs do not support DX12 Asynchronous Compute/Shaders Reddit Community Maxwell Can t do VR well? An issue of latency. Reddit Article Oxide Games Claims NVIDIA GPUs Do Not Support DirectX 12 Asynchronous Compute DSOGaming TechPowerUP Game Debate Community GTX 980, GTX 970, GTX 980 Ti may not be fully DX 12 supported Steam Community Article AMD Dives Deep on Asynchronous Shading AnandTech Article DirectX12, LiquidVR may breathe fresh life into AMD GPUs thanks to asynchronous shading ExtremeTech Article Oxide Games Dev Replies on Ashes of the Singularity Controversy WCCFTech 17 DIRECTX 12 & AMD RADEON GRAPHICS AUGUST, 2015 APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES