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How does all this graphics goodness affect frame rates?
If we set the wayback machine to a couple of years ago, we’d relive the disappointment we all experienced with the first DirectX 10 games. Visual effects added only marginally to image quality, but the performance hit was huge. What’s the impact of these spiffy new DirectX 11 features? Also, what’s the impact of postprocessing effects? Obviously, adding more shader programs can impact performance, but how much?
We tested performance with hardware tessellation using the Unigine Heaven 2.0 synthetic benchmark (which uses a real game engine) and STALKER: Call of Pripyat. Call of Pripyat was also used to test performance with SSAO, HBAO, and HDAO.
The performance of Nvidia’s GTX 480’s tessellation engine looks pretty awesome relative to AMD’s part in a benchmark like Heaven, but as we can see from Call of Pripyat, the impact of tessellation on real games is less clear. There just aren’t enough titles yet that make heavy use of hardware tessellation to determine which GPU is superior. Subjective experiences differ; Metro 2033’s performance, for example, seems to give the edge to Nvidia, though we don’t have hard numbers to back this up. On the other hand, Aliens vs. Predator is a smooth experience on both AMD and Nvidia’s latest cards.
Just Cause 2 supports two interesting GPU postprocessing features if you’re running an Nvidia-based card: bokeh and water simulation. Thus, we tested the GTX 480’s performance with and without those features using the game’s Concrete Jungle built-in benchmark.
As you can see, enabling these features incurs a performance cost. But that cost is a few percentage points, rather than the 75–80 percent decrease we saw moving from DX9 to DX10.
In the past, comparisons regarding performance versus visual features revolved around antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. DirectX 10 added some new tricks to the game developer’s arsenal, but came with a severe performance penalty. DirectX 11’s new features can affect performance, but the new generation of graphics cards enables you to run with much better visual fidelity while maintaining reasonable performance.
It takes time for developers to take advantage of new features. The good news is that the uptake on DirectX 11–capable GPUs has been one of the most rapid in recent history. We are starting to see increasing use of capabilities that first began showing up with DirectX 9—finally. For example, it’s hard to find a current-generation game that doesn’t take advantage of the postprocessing effects made possible with programmable shaders. Developers continue to experiment with postprocessing effects, as we’ve seen with the bokeh setting in Just Cause 2. And features like film grain and depth of field are commonplace. Newer titles bring new effects, such as emulating color filters seen in big-budget movies and TV shows.
Good tools will be the key to seeing new features take hold. One reason postprocessing has become so common is that graphics programmers have developed tools similar in concept to Photoshop filters, which allows artists to easily implement them in the art pipeline. It will be some time before similar tools are readily available for newer, DX11-capable hardware.
Then there’s the multiplatform question. Larger game publishers are leery of pushing high-end, PC-exclusive features if they’re shipping big-budget titles across multiple platforms, including game consoles that may not support tessellation or other features. While the PC has made something of a comeback in the gaming arena, putting additional developer resources into PC-exclusive abilities is still something of an afterthought.
Still, we are seeing new games emerge that take full advantage of new graphics possibilities. Eastern Europe seems to be an emerging haven for bleeding-edge development of PC games, if the STALKER series, Cryostasis, and Metro 2033 are any indication. And even console-oriented titles, like Dirt 2, can be architected to take advantage of new APIs on PCs.
So if you have one of the new generation of DirectX 11 cards, turn up the eye candy and experiment. Your games can look better than ever.
|
Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 | XFX Radeon HD 5870 XXX |
| Heaven, no tessellation (fps) | 62.8 |
56.2 |
| Heaven, moderate tessellation (fps) | 55.0 |
43.5 |
| Heaven, normal tessellation (fps) | 50.3 |
36.4 |
| Heaven, extreme tessellation (fps) | 39.0 |
21.8 |
| Call of Pripyat, all off (fps) | 78.5 | 88.8 |
| Call of Pripyat, contact shadows on (fps) | 74.7 | 77.0 |
| Call of Pripyat, tessellation on (fps) | 74.5 | 86.5 |
| Call of Pripyat, SSAO (fps) | 62.7 | 75.8 |
| Call of Pripyat, HBAO (fps) | 68.3 | 77.1 |
| Call of Pripyat, HDAO (fps) | 56.4 | 65.1 |
| Call of Pripyat, tessellation, contact shadows, and HDAO on (fps) | 52.1 | 57.5 |
Best scores are bolded. Our benchmark test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition in an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with 6GB of DDR3/1333 and an 850TX Corsair PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. Benchmarks were run at 1920x1200. AA was disabled for these benchmarks. For Call of Pripyat, SSAO quality was set to high.
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 |
|
| Just Cause 2, all off (fps) | 44 |
| Just Cause 2, bokeh on (fps) | 41.7 |
| Just Cause 2, water simulation on (fps) | 38.6 |
| Just Cause 2, both on (fps) | 36.8 |
Tests run in Concrete Jungle benchmark. Other graphics features were dialed up to the maximum settings, and the benchmark was run at 1920x1200.
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July 11, 2010 at 3:54pm
Simply well put! I have owned my share of both manufacturers; back from the days of the 8MB Diamond Monster 3D and what mesiah is pointing out is completely true...
Settle down fanboys! I go with the best performance/efficiency/bang for your buck offerings that get the job done...whatever brand that may be.
Submitted by mesiah on Wed, 07/07/2010 - 5:44pm
Aparently you missed the point of this entire article. This was not a comparison of ATI vs Nvidia. This was a comparison of DX11 vs DX10. Yes, ati and nvidia were differentiated in the article because each companies cards respond differently to the added effects.
As far as driver stability goes, neither company has a clean track record for their drivers. Of course an Nvidia fan boy is going to claim he has never had a problem with Nvidia drivers. An ATI fan boy is going to do the same. Having owned my fair share of cards from both manufacturers, I can tell you that they both put out their fair share of lemons. But if you insist that Nvidias shit still smells like roses, I will remind you of their recent driver recall.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/nvidia_yanks_19675_drivers_investigate_overheating_reports"
gothliciouz
July 09, 2010 at 9:59pm
dx 11 sounds pretty cool, now if only game developers will use them properly. beautiful games we will get.
Valek7
July 09, 2010 at 9:33pm
Generally speaking, I've had a lot of good experience with DX10 and only a couple of games (like Crysis) actually showed a noticeable decrease in performance over DX9. With everything else, it was either a minor boost or no change at all.
But, the one game that I have to tout is Flight Simulator X, which now runs like a scalded cat in DX10 mode and Windows 7 on a Core i7 920. I was able to increase the detail settings much much further than I could with DX9 and I'm getting more than double the frame rates! With DX9, I'm talking about low end detail settings and barely... I mean BARELY 20 fps. It was a joke, at best. With DX10... I now have plenty of the good detail settings (scenery nearly maxed, textures maxed, further view distances... you name it, all bumped UP) and I get 50+ fps consistently! It's like a whole new simulator! DX10 and FSX FTW!
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gliscameria
July 08, 2010 at 2:54pm
First off, very good article. DX11 sounds awesome.
It's been a while since I've done photography, but I think you have this backwards:
"Stopping the camera down results in a soft blurry background behind the sharply focused image. Opening up the aperture brings the background into better focus. "
Bigger apertures capture more light but reduce the FOV. I always remembered this because nature hates us and has to make everything difficult.
//Glis
dracx619
July 09, 2010 at 5:03am
something that has confused me plenty. lets see i have to think about this, to get a nice DOF, i decrease the shutter and increase the apeture (lets more light in), to get a shot in full focus, i increase the shutter and decrease the aperture(less light in)... yep, you right, i think?
gliscameria
July 13, 2010 at 1:37pm
I'm drawing off of old knowledge here...
When you increase aperture you allow more light in, but you also allow light coming in from more directions, which will decrease your DOE. Back in highschool VisCom you usually make pinhole cameras, they don't need a lens because the aperture is so small, but the exposure has to be pretty high. It's always a nasty tradeoff. It would be cool to see if you show a reduced DOE for humans in the dark. Maybe it's harder to focus on stuff in the dark because the focus has to be much more accurate, like seeing your blurry clock (outside of fuzzy eyes).
//Glis
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July 13, 2010 at 3:23pm
screw all this, it makes my head hurt, lol. i gotta dust off my dslr and try it all out again
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samduhman
July 08, 2010 at 10:27am
So is it time to buy a DirectX 11 card? I've been weighting this issue for a couple weeks now. I have a 4890 but being a hardware junkie I'm usually in the market to upgrade some part/s of my PC. Would you suggest I go ahead or wait for the next generation of gpus? I want a 5870 but don't want to spend that much.
cahedler
July 08, 2010 at 5:51am
It's interesting to see the results from Call of Pripyat, which have the GTX 480 being outperformed by a significant margin by the 5870. Can anyone shed some light on why it doesn't perform very well in Call of Pripyat?
Scintor
July 07, 2010 at 5:12pm
I cannot offer direct side by side comparisons, nVidia vs ATI, but there appears to be a lot of traffic in various forums to call into question the lack of stability in ATI's drivers for their video cards. On the other hand, nVidia has provided rock solid drivers for each of their video cards I have owned over the years.
It is relatively easy to compare performance of each company's video cards by using hard numbers for frame rates, and it is not so easy to quantify driver stability, but word of mouth is not so good for ATI, so I'll stick with nVidia.
Thanks for the 411 on DirectX 11.
mesiah
July 07, 2010 at 5:44pm
Aparently you missed the point of this entire article. This was not a comparison of ATI vs Nvidia. This was a comparison of DX11 vs DX10. Yes, ati and nvidia were differentiated in the article because each companies cards respond differently to the added effects.
As far as driver stability goes, neither company has a clean track record for their drivers. Of course an Nvidia fan boy is going to claim he has never had a problem with Nvidia drivers. An ATI fan boy is going to do the same. Having owned my fair share of cards from both manufacturers, I can tell you that they both put out their fair share of lemons. But if you insist that Nvidias shit still smells like roses, I will remind you of their recent driver recall.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/nvidia_yanks_19675_drivers_investigate_overheating_reports
K0BALT
July 07, 2010 at 6:41pm
I love Nvidia and would pretty much call myself a fanboy, but I will also admit any flaws within their products as well. The ONLY issue I have encountered was the one driver that disabled overclocking... which only lasted a few weeks. All I have had is Nvidia and can't really compare the two brands. I've always had Nvidia and have never run into a problem besides that one driver...which didnt affect me because I dont overclock my cards unless im benchmarking. Theyve treated me well and I know ATI makes good things too. Which is why I don't put them down. But... in the end I am a firm believer that Nvidia is overall a better product because of their technology and software in daily use. ATI is greats stuff, but I think Nvidia will reign supreme. It's like comparing Windows to Linux. Theyre both good, but one is more used than the other for a reason.
This is my opinion and I'm entitled to it....as are you. not trying to start a flame war. We're all here for the same reason, so let's be adults. MaxPC to all!
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mesiah
July 07, 2010 at 10:38pm
Everyone is entitled to their opinions. That doesn't make them right. Just kidding :P No, I agree with you. There is nothing wrong with brand loyalty. There are definately products out there that I have a preference for. What annoys me is when people let their love for a logo blind them to any and all flaws in a product. Its blind love for a brand that has made apple so powerful as of late. They could put out a dog turd with an apple logo and people would eat it up.
I think this is a good article and I didn't want to see the comments get derailed into an Nvidia vs ATI dispute. They have both put out good solid drivers, and at times they have put out some barely functional steaming piles of poo.
