Tuesday, December 6th 2016
AMD Cripples Older GCN GPUs of Async-Compute Support?
AMD allegedly disabled asynchronous-compute technology support on older generations of Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture, since Radeon Software 16.9.2. With the newer drivers, "Ashes of the Singularity" no longer supports asynchronous-compute, a feature that improves performance in the game, on GPUs based on the first-generation GCN architecture, such as the Radeon R9 280X.
"Ashes of the Singularity" benchmarks run by Beyond3D forum members on GCN 1.0 hardware, comparing older drivers to version 16.9.2 shows that the game supports async-compute on the older drivers, and returns improved performance. AMD, on its part, is pointing users to a patch change-list from the developers of "Ashes..." which reads that the game supports DirectX 12 async-compute only on GCN 1.1 (eg: Radeon R9 290) and above.
Source:
Reddit
"Ashes of the Singularity" benchmarks run by Beyond3D forum members on GCN 1.0 hardware, comparing older drivers to version 16.9.2 shows that the game supports async-compute on the older drivers, and returns improved performance. AMD, on its part, is pointing users to a patch change-list from the developers of "Ashes..." which reads that the game supports DirectX 12 async-compute only on GCN 1.1 (eg: Radeon R9 290) and above.
97 Comments on AMD Cripples Older GCN GPUs of Async-Compute Support?
that aside i see some people try to put this claim to test at beyond 3d.
Stay classy TPU.
Or the patch was requested by AMD? A larger selection of games is required to test the notion of driver based decreases.
Either way, it's a non issue, given the age of cards and small game sample.
AMD released drivers, installing those drivers disables AC on older cards in AotS, rolling back to the older drivers re-enables AC on older cards in AotS. How exactly is this supposed to be a dev issue? did they write the AMD drivers?
Granted supporting a half decade old card in a cutting age game may be undesirable but this is still a bum move by AMD.
Where the title says AMD gimped their cards when using HDMI 2.0 and HDR when HDMI 2.0 is the problem, would exist on anything using HDMI 2.0, and just sucks compared to DisplayPort... but @btarunr thought pointing a finger at AMD with the title was a good idea. Now I see this thread, once again, pointing a finger at AMD when it very well could be the application at fault for making technical design decisions. Simply put, what the hell, TPU?! ...because games can change what they're doing based on a driver's version or the kind of hardware present. It's not uncommon for devs to do this to take advantage of features on different kinds of GPUs but, still having something to fall back on when the hardware doesn't support it or if it's not advantageous to use it.
So would you rather have no DX12, or not be able to play anything released in DX11 in the last 2 years, PLUS no DX12?
In a first place, i started to search why GCN 1.0 was not supported in Rise Of The Tomb Raider last patch.
When Maxwell was accused to not support Async Compute, someone create a program for testing Async Compute. It worked on GCN 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 back in time.
So i just wanted to verify if that still the case and that how i find that Async Compute was disabled on news drivers. Then i post on Reddit.
After that, many ask me to test a game that support Async Compute on GCN 1.0. So i tried Ashes Of Singularity. You know the end. That just confirm that Async Compute was disabled on news drivers. Old drivers performs way better because of Async Compute.
DirectX12 driver 16.3.1 Async Compute off : i.imgur.com/aiV1pSg.png
DirectX12 driver 16.3.1 Async Compute on : i.imgur.com/CGrb4yM.png
DirectX12 drivers superior to 16.9.2 Async Compute off :i.imgur.com/yiSSRCE.png
DirectX12 drivers superior to 16.9.2 Async Compute on :i.imgur.com/Fch5V8w.png
Nobody is arguing that the 5000 and 6000 series isnt legacy.
I think this is less AMD and more lazy devs.
Either way, I think more testing is in order to determine if AMD actually gimped their drivers or not or if AMD gimped async compute like how they gimped HDMI. ;)
I received a good amount of results all around the world that users did for me and their results just confirmed my findings. Thank you all.