id Software: Async Compute will be a major factor in all engines across all platforms

John from DSOGaming writes: "A lot has already been said about Async Compute. And after everything we’ve seen so far from NVIDIA’s side (including its latest GPUs), it appears that AMD will triumph in all games supporting it. Not only that, but it appears that more and more engines will support this specific feature of DX12 and Vulkan."

[Software_Lover]

AMD is playing chess.

[ULTp0ltergeist]

AMD is innovating in a way with features but Nvidia has better design and quality.

[bulletskillutwo]

i hope to see more people utilize this, because doom imo looks and plays amazing. especially on the consoles.

[Razzer]

I'm running Doom on high settings (1080p) with a frame-rate hovering around 100 on a less than average R9 280x. I've never seen performance like this on any of my games. A bit mind-blowing.

[Kleptic]

Completely agree. I'm pretty cpu bound most of the time for any game. Still using an A10 6800k w/ igpu disabled, but OC'd to 4.8ghz. I can get by, could still hold a little over 60fps in BF4 multiplayer...but, I expected Doom to hurt more on the gpu side...

I'm using a 280x, too. 1150/1600 clocks and Doom was completely playable and find with ogl. mins around 55 on high settings, other than some really bizarre spots in certain levels where it would dip into the 40's. With vulkan, I'm averaging over 100...On ultra, averages in the low 70's even with full shadow detail (the big killer as far as settings go it seems like). I've left it on Ultra for everything else, but bumped that down to medium, as now it never mins below 60. Very happy with the bump, as I'll be upgrading a cpu before gpu and was hoping that the card still had some life in it...definitely does.

[PersonMan]

What a dumb article. It doesn't even explain what Async is. Am I just supposed to know?

[Deano1988]

Why would they detract from what they are trying to put forward by wasting a load of time exlplaining something you can read up somewhere else if not on their own site.

[bulletskillutwo]

Asynchronous compute allows all GPUs based on AMD’s GCN architecture to perform graphics and compute workloads simultaneously.

[joeorc]

@bulletskillutwo
Exactly.

Now also there is something even more significant added in there many also are overlooking about this ..do you know what : " Big LiTTle Technology" is being deployment now not only in smartphone, tablets and smart TV's , but also our current game consoles like the Xbox one and PS4 use such , but you cannot access the little satalite processors in the Little configuration.. But next few years there will be accessible on other future systems..

This is going to be very important, because compute clustering is now going standard moving forward..Small cluster compute systems inside a much larger compute system, but the little compute clusters can run in background or compute its very own compute and graphics compute workloads separate or in tandem with the much larger big system.

Key point being , right now many smartphone QuadCore or OctoCore or Deca Core chipset already are Big LiTTle configured Systems, and now these same systems are being included into the Desktop, tower and game console systems we are playing on now..right now it's being dedicated to just security..a very small isolated compute cluster..but soon more robust ones will be included, and not just one or two but more than 4 , or Even 8 of these small LiTTle compute cluster chips mounted directly onto the mobo.

Here is the information if you and others are interested:
https://community.arm.com/g...

Since they are going also into servers configuration systems itself..it makes for advantages to now combine pin to pin x86 & ARM Soc's to such a configuration.. Hell AMD was going to do such with its Puma, but global foundries made it cost prohibitive.. But other companies are looking to add in..

One of reasons many, but take a look at this..

https://youtu.be/ei9uVskwPN...

Very robust compute server for power efficient and low costs to setup.

[dcbronco]

It also makes them more efficient by having all CPU cores communicate with the GPU to keep the GPU fed constant work. GPUs can have a lot of idle cores because the CPU can't feed it assignments because only one core was talking to the GPU in the past.

AMD ftw!

[LostDjinn]

"this specific feature of DX12 and Vulkan"...?! WTF?
What's OpenCL? What's the PS4 running on? Apple run what again? Hell, do you even know what the hell you're talking about?

Async compute is api and hardware dependent. There are many APIs and many versions of different hardware that are capable. What you've written (excluding id software's input) is little more than chin poo.

Edit: @OpenGL. Yeah it is good.

[OpenGL]

Glad to see AMD's design and work with the consoles is finally paying off on PC.

[MyDietEqualsGames]

I've missed the informative posts you and VulcanProject would post, such as the ones posted over the years on this site.

I hope to see you guys more on topics such as this.

[Erik7357]

http://www.forbes.com/sites...

Not really..

[OpenGL]

Fire Strike doesn't use async and it's a synthetic benchmark supported by Nvidia, it's hardly more credible than actual game benchmarks.

[windblowsagain]

That's why Sony used a custom built gpu with more compute units.

[TheCommentator]

MS chose the number of ACES that they did because if you can't keep the ACES fed, they're not as efficient and don't come as close to their theoretical maximum performance. To balance the console and keep all of the ACES fed, they have the ability to issue more commands at one time and can also Move data around the console from virtually anywhere to anywhere else to free up resources. Fewer bottlenecks means better general performance, but less Tflops. But hey, Tflops are everything, right? Of course they are, that's why the PS4 has 1.8 and the PS3 has 2.1 Tflops total performance...

[LostDjinn]

"MS chose the number of ACES that they did because if you can't keep the ACES fed, they're not as efficient and don't come as close to their theoretical maximum performance. To balance the console and keep all of the ACES fed, they have the ability to issue more commands at one time and can also Move data around the console from virtually anywhere to anywhere else to free up resources. Fewer bottlenecks means better general performance, but less Tflops. But hey, Tflops are everything, right? Of course they are, that's why the PS4 has 1.8 and the PS3 has 2.1 Tflops total performance..."

Well that's just an awesome combination of desperation and BS. Nice work.
Here's a link to actual benchmarks. http://www.redgamingtech.co...
Roll on down to the "final performance" part if you don't want to read the rest. Here. I'll copy the text from that part for you.

"I’m sure the above is what you’re all waiting for – and it makes a lot of sense. But then, at the same time, the performance difference between the Xbox One’s GPU and Playstation 4’s GPU is actually slightly higher than what you might think. What Ubisoft do say is that “PS4 – 2 ms of GPU time – 640 dancers” – but no form of metric for the Xbox One, which is a bit of a shame. It’s clear however that for the benchmarking Ubisoft have used here, the PS4’s GPU is virtually double the speed."

Thank for the laugh though.

Oh, and the Xbox gpu is Bonaire based while the PS4 gpu is Pitcairn based. Given the crap you just posted I'm pretty sure you have no idea what that means.

Balanced. LOL. Straight from MS's embarrassing PR playbook from the start of the gen.

[TheCommentator]

Glad to make your day, Lost.

The article you quote from doesn't have anythiing to do with how future engines, which actually take full advantage of the DX12 >HARDWARE< features that even Dice isn't using yet (See: Battlefield 1 still uses DX11). It also stands to reason that the "double the speed" nonsense never even comes close to any real world differences seen in any recent game comparisons, if any at all that I can think of. I don't play games in theoretical documents, one way or the other, but the PS4 nearly always has the advantage by some margin. I still believe that XB1 games will improve over time whereas the PS4 will run out of steam. Two reasons why. Sony admitted that they are unsure how much longer the PS4 can improve its engines before they need to move on (they've had their "better than Vulkan" APi since launch), and MS hasn't really even seen developers working with theirs yet which means that many (if not all) implementations of DX12 are purely experimental at the moment.

[meche334]

Power of teh cell. PS3 lacked a good memory setup

[TheCommentator]

I gave two reasons. Here are some more:

•FL12.0 and 12.1 are hardware levels. Phil said that DX12 supported full DX12, and that MS knew what DX12 was doing when they built the XB1.
•Full DX12 support requires the WDDM 2.0 kernel, which didn't get into the XB1 until the Win 10 update.
•The WDDM 2.0 kernel is required to allow for the CPU to multithread. Up until the fall update, the XB1 communicated via a single core to the GPU.
•Many major developers have pledged support, but few are far enough in development of DX12 games to see any results of what DX12 can do for the console.
•Gears 4 and Deus Ex are two of the first real tests for DX12 performance.
•While MS are at fault for not having the kernel and API ready at launch, there is performance in these elements that are just now being coded for. How good do you think first gen DX12 games will look compared to second or third gen DX12 games?
•Why would DX12 even be an API if it didn't improve anything over DX11?

Please stop with the name calling and slander. If I said anything to you in a PM, whenever that may have been, it is between us and us alone.

[Kleptic]

@TheCommentator:

are you serious? The PS3 had '2.1 Tflops'? typo, right?...You're saying it's 'better' for system balance to release something with a weaker gpu, and that that makes it overall more efficient?...That MS was ahead of the curve against the PS4 by gimping the gpu, losing literally on every single multiplat game ever released this gen, and being one of the most quickly forgotten consoles of modern gaming...and that was...on purpose?

Just please fill us in that these were typing errors.

and DX12...still? DX12 is how MS is getting xbox games on PC...not to in any way improve the performance of the Xbox One...I'm really sorry about that...some of us have been saying it for over a year...and this E3 they directly told you...but it's not sticking for some reason...DX12 on the XBO is so devs don't have to do extra work for win 10; the real platform they're investing in right now...scorpio is another move to gain developer attention towards win 10...the xbox one console...is dying...dx12, scorpio, etc...are moves related to scuttling the ship, not making the xbox one less of a mistake...

You fell right into the misleading talk of DX12 on XBO precisely because you assumed the Xbox one was 'just a PC' before the announcement...the xbox one had an AMD derived to the metal api just like the PS4 did at launch...AMD proposed this to both console makers before 2011, when they also were working on the PC release of GCN hardware. The early console api's for proposed apu's did a lot of the dirty work for Sony and MS, and AMD took that tech to develop mantle for the PC market...Sony and MS were on very equal footing api wise, and remain that way. MS brought in DX12 to the Xbox one to unify development with windows 10 PC's, not take the xbo out of dx11's inefficient trap.It's funny how AMD will talk about how mantle came to be, which turned into Vulkan and how they worked directly with MS for async compute in dx12...yet MS gets all quiet and weird about it in order to make it seem it's yet another bit of magic sauce for a console that is simply ill-equipped hardware wise.

but yeah...Gears 4 will be a big 1st party test for DX12...it'll be the first major game built from the ground up to support the api on windows 10...I'm sure they're heavily focused on a ~1Tflop xbo now that MS greenlit them to go nuts with all the hardware available that isn't buried in low end laptops...You'd have better luck hoping that the 'power of the cloud' will make the xbo version remotely comparable...

[TheCommentator]

No, Kleptic, but I did notice that I forgot to add in the PS4's CPU performance when comparing the PS4 to the PS3. In the PS3, about 1.8 Tflops comes from the RSX and about 350 Gflops comes from the GPU. in the PS4, around 1.8 Tflops comes from the GPU and 200 Gflops comes from the CPU for a total of 2 Tflops. That was my bad.

I said that MS has less bottlenecks in their system. That doesn't equate to more power. I also said that there is DX12 hardware to support that balance, and balance can lead to better efficiency. Sony has used the proper API since launch, MS hasn't been using theirs at all until the fall update last year. We're seeing first gen DX12 games just being made now. Which console do you think has more power left to tap into?

[LostDjinn]

Bwahaha. Slander? You admit it's the truth and then go on to say I have to keep it between us?

Much like the rest of your posts, that's just laughable.

[TheCommentator]

Seriously, Lost. This is why you were labelled inappropriate in the first place and why you'd recieved that nasty PM from me so many months ago. You don't listen. I've given plenty of facts to contradict your theory, but you choose to point and laugh at people and that's just sad. My theory evolves over time to reflect the accuracy of the information that's available. I don't hold beliefs as Gospel.

You've been marked as inappropriate for this post as well.

[LostDjinn]

If you were truthful and used facts we wouldn't be here. You don't. That's the point.
As for being marked... that's not why and you know it. Much like your claim you sent a "nasty" pm (which was just you begging me to understand because of your condition). You're just talking crap.

Nice try though. Now you've earned this next bit.

[meche334]

@LostDjinn MS already said in a presentation that Xbox One is full DX12.1 compatible. This is from an offical slide too.

[LostDjinn]

Link?

[Destiny1080]

vulkan is the future

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[The_Kills]

Major factor? I don't see many publishers/developers paying much mind currently. Far too much work for them to care to fund such efforts to be properly optimized.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I get the feeling it will be a very slow uptake, I mean, look at all the issues Doom has on PC:

http://steamcommunity.com/a...

Vulkan just added more issues for those that are struggling with the game. I can't trust developers to make sure it runs well to begin with (that seems to be a reoccurring trend lately with AAA titles).