AMD Responds to Ryzen's Lower Than Expected 1080p Performance

[Raevenlord]

The folks at PC Perspective have shared a statement from AMD in response to their question as to why AMD's Ryzen processors show lower than expected performance at 1080p resolution (despite posting good high-resolution, high-detail frame rates). Essentially, AMD is reinforcing the need for developers to optimize their games' performance to AMD's CPUs (claiming that these have only been properly tuned to Intel's architecture). AMD also puts weight behind the fact they have sent about 300 developer kits already, so that content creators can get accustomed to AMD's Ryzen, and expect this number to increase to about a thousand developers in the 2017 time-frame. AMD is expecting gaming performance to only increase from its launch-day level. Read AMD's statement after the break.





AMD's John Taylor had this to say:

"As we presented at Ryzen Tech Day, we are supporting 300+ developer kits with game development studios to optimize current and future game releases for the all-new Ryzen CPU. We are on track for 1000+ developer systems in 2017. For example, Bethesda at GDC yesterday announced its strategic relationship with AMD to optimize for Ryzen CPUs, primarily through Vulkan low-level API optimizations, for a new generation of games, DLC and VR experiences.

Oxide Games also provided a public statement today on the significant performance uplift observed when optimizing for the 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 CPU design - optimizations not yet reflected in Ashes of the Singularity benchmarking. Creative Assembly, developers of the Total War series, made a similar statement today related to upcoming Ryzen optimizations.

CPU benchmarking deficits to the competition in certain games at 1080p resolution can be attributed to the development and optimization of the game uniquely to Intel platforms - until now. Even without optimizations in place, Ryzen delivers high, smooth frame rates on all "CPU-bound" games, as well as overall smooth frame rates and great experiences in GPU-bound gaming and VR. With developers taking advantage of Ryzen architecture and the extra cores and threads, we expect benchmarks to only get better, and enable Ryzen excel at next generation gaming experiences as well.

Game performance will be optimized for Ryzen and continue to improve from at-launch frame rate scores."

Two game developers also chimed in.

Oxide Games, creators of the Nitrous game engine that powers Ashes of the Singularity:

"Oxide games is incredibly excited with what we are seeing from the Ryzen CPU. Using our Nitrous game engine, we are working to scale our existing and future game title performance to take full advantage of Ryzen and its 8-core, 16-thread architecture, and the results thus far are impressive. These optimizations are not yet available for Ryzen benchmarking. However, expect updates soon to enhance the performance of games like Ashes of the Singularity on Ryzen CPUs, as well as our future game releases." - Brad Wardell, CEO Stardock and Oxide

And Creative Assembly, the creators of the Total War Series and, more recently, Halo Wars 2:

"Creative Assembly is committed to reviewing and optimizing its games on the all-new Ryzen CPU. While current third-party testing doesn't reflect this yet, our joint optimization program with AMD means that we are looking at options to deliver performance optimization updates in the future to provide better performance on Ryzen CPUs moving forward. "

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[caleb]

I don't think anybody will recode already published titles to utilize more cores but lets see.

 

[RejZoR]

When games depend on small thread count, higher clock is needed to make up the difference. The concept is not new and all highly threaded CPU's have problem with that. They always come with lower clocks. That's why AMD is pushing more cores so hard. If they can't win on the IPC and clock front, they certainly can with multiple threads/cores.

And lets be realistic, most people won't be running GTX 1080Ti or Titan X Pascal with these, meaning framerate differences to Intel will be minimal. And even with these, difference is minimal and most people won't even notice anything different. I've stopped chasing tiny framerate differences long time ago. If CPU or graphic card is about right compared to competition and you like it, just go for it.

 

[londiste]

And lets be realistic, most people won't be running GTX 1080Ti or Titan X Pascal with these,

with 350-550$/£/€ cpu-s that might be used for gaming? as opposed to current crop of gaming computers with generally cheaper cpus that are running high end gpu-s?

something else to note with gaming results is that ryzens tend to lose to lower-clocked broadwell-e as well.

 

[RejZoR]

Most of these systems will end up running GTX 1060/RX480 or GTX 1070 grade graphic cards.

 

[londiste]

Most of these systems will end up running GTX 1060/RX480 or GTX 1070 grade graphic cards.

any particular reason why?

 

[RCoon]

I just LOVE it when people say things like "developers should optimize their games better" and "developers should learn to multithread their games better" as if it were stupendously easy and totally viable in every case. For big studios, they could probably do better, although most of them are working on old ass APIs and engines that are simply limited in scope, and switching either of these would seriously disrupt their workflow, which in turn would set them back on timelines and $$$. For Indie games, they don't need 16 threads. Most of them barely need two.

 

[Camm]

Ryzen's occasionally tanky performance however comes down to two things.

A: Intel specific compilers being used. Game developers can fix this be recompiling and using specific codepaths.
B: Scheduler performance. There's an insane bottleneck going out to fabric between each 4 core complex. The scheduler needs to ensure threads that are using similar data (L2+L3) stay on each core complex.

And fixing whatever bloody memory erata is going on atm wouldn't hurt either.

 

[PerfectWave]

It is not about core count or low frequency because 1080x can go up to 4ghz. I guess really is because using intel compiler or maybe like fury that dislike low resolution and give the best on high resolution

 

[Xzibit]

I just LOVE it when people say things like "developers should optimize their games better" and "developers should learn to multithread their games better" as if it were stupendously easy and totally viable in every case. For big studios, they could probably do better, although most of them are working on old ass APIs and engines that are simply limited in scope, and switching either of these would seriously disrupt their workflow, which in turn would set them back on timelines and $$$. For Indie games, they don't need 16 threads. Most of them barely need two.

XB1 and PS4 use more cores. More cores at a much lower fqz and IPC. Optimization has to be spread over cores.

On the other hand you have PCs which are dominated by 2core and 4cores 48%-44%. You end up with Ports which are done poorly by the same reason you just said (They dump the porting process to a 3rd party). Most publisher do consoles first because those are "assured sales" and PC are an after thought unless its an MMO

 

[BiggieShady]

I just LOVE it when people say things like "developers should optimize their games better" and "developers should learn to multithread their games better" as if it were stupendously easy and totally viable in every case. For big studios, they could probably do better, although most of them are working on old ass APIs and engines that are simply limited in scope, and switching either of these would seriously disrupt their workflow, which in turn would set them back on timelines and $$$. For Indie games, they don't need 16 threads. Most of them barely need two.

Yeah, when months pass after the project development it's extremely difficult to get back in ... however, in this case if the game already uses thread pools properly, it will be probably something as simple as going back to latest version in the source code repository and re-compiling with latest version of the compiler using zen specific optimizations in compiler options ... for example latest gears of wars should run better on ryzen since it's heavily multithreaded and dx12

 

[techy1]

amd Ryzen has better gaming performance than intel (yes I said it - read few more lines before respond...)... lest say you wanna i7-6900K type of CPU performance (obviously your primary need is rendering and crunching, not gaming)... and then you want to game with same system... lets put that in numbers:
intels:
1000$ CPU (not a dime less for such a CPU performance)
300$ (cheapest X99 mobos)
600$ GTX 1080 (because most reviews used only these card for their Ryzen gaming testing)
lets asume that others (case, cooling, ram, psu, fans etc) are equall for both systems.
total = 1900$ (without others - that should be same)

amd:
399$ 1700X
200$ mobo
1300$ for one Titan XP or even two GTX 1080 Ti's


now we have 1900$ vs 1900$ system with similar CPU performance (for rendering and crunching - what is primary objective for CPU's liek these)... and which system will push more frames now? the one with single gtx 1080 or the one with GTX 1080 Ti's x2 or with Titan XP ???

 

[miki]

Intel really got in everybodys mind. 5 years of stagnation in CPU market and overcharging for their cpus and still people defend intel. Even the reviewers. Tell me what game did max out AMD rysen CPUs. I bet you they work in even the most demanding games with 30%-40% of its resources used, not more. What game is unplayable with AMD CPU. What game is bottlenecked with AMD cpus. 7700K cpu is 4 core cpu, with higher core frequency that is better only in 1920x1080 resolution, it even states in some reviews that as the resolution goes up the disadventage melts down in favour od AMD CPUs.
My point is AMD rysen cpus are superior in every sense compared to intel core I7 7700K, and even their HEDT price/performace wise. So what if some game works on amd cpu with 100 fps, and on intel with 110 fps, does that even matter.
5 years i ve been waiting for afordable 8 core cpu i and finally got it to replace my aging 3930K, and im am buying it.
No amount of intel fanboism is going to stop me in that regard.

 

[londiste]

disadvantage does not melt at higher resolution due to anything to do with cpu. higher resolutions will simply bring gpu limit quite a bit lower.
with 1080ti (and hopefully vega) out soon, titanxp level of performance will be more accesible than ever. that performance level is the same on 1440p as gtx1080 performance is on 1080p.

 

[vziera]

Dumbass snobs got rekt by @techy1 comment

 

[bug]

Let's see (in no particular order):

1. Intel's CPUs to this still run some apps faster with HT disabled, so disabling SMT to improve performance is not totally unexpected.
2. Ryzen seems to be fine with everything but games. Singling out games as needing optimization is to be taken with a grain of salt, imho.
3. In the face of AthlonXP onslaught, intel also claimed that Netburst was faster if you compiled apps specifically for it. And that was true, but we all know how it ended.

I'll take Ryzen at face value and welcome any further improvements. But I will not cont on them.

 

[NeoGalaxy]

I think that AMD should 1st release a driver for the X370 chipset + drivers for Ryzen. Then we'll see how it goes or works. Also while playing The Division (DX12 render), on 1800X, the frames do not really fluctuate, I play at 60 FPS thou. 1080p. Not sure how important this is but playing the game seems more fluid.

 

[unsmart]

I don't get the focus on the 1080 gaming numbers? from the reviews I read this platform is buggy as all hell! What good is gaming if your rig won't even run,makes me wonder about AMDs relationship with its partners.

 

[Solidstate89]

To be honest, they said the exact same thing about Bulldozer and that never really came to fruition.

I expect the most "optimizations" we'll see coming out of this are those outlier games that get shittier frame rates with SMT enabled. I expect that to get fixed by developers, but not a whole lot happening beyond that.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Most of these systems will end up running GTX 1060/RX480 or GTX 1070 grade graphic cards.

quite a statement to make, what do you base this on?

 

[noname00]

For me, Ryzen does exactly what I was I was expecting it to do, maybe it's a bit faster than I was expecting.
With this response they are basically blaming the developers for the "poor" gaming performance. And this is exactly what they did with the FX-8150 and FX-8350. "Performance will increase after developers will optimize their applications for our CPUs" - this is jut a poor excuse. For now, this launch looks similar to Buldozer.
I am not dissapointed by Ryzen, but I won't buy one soon either, no reason to replace my 6700k. It's just a good upgrade for AMD fanboys that still have their FX-83xx CPUs (if you are going to buy a R7 now but a year ago you did not buy an i5 or i7 because it was too expensive, you are clearly a fanboy), or Intel owners that did not upgrade for more than 4 years (considering the same price segment).
The real problem for gamers, is that 4 and 6 core variants won't clock higher.

 

[FYFI13]

In my eyes this is a "work in progress" product, unfinished and rushed out. Can't remember any "unlokcked" CPU that barely can reach it's advertised speeds and non-existing overclocking. On top of that all memory issues.

Eventually they will fix that but this had dropped a bad tomato on Ryzens name already.

Gaming performance is alright (in most tittles) if you forget the fact that this thing costs nearly 500 pounds. Although, even ~200 pound Intel CPU's are much better choice right now for those who mainly game on their PC's.

PS. Revievers, how many of you were asked by AMD to "bench Ryzens in GPU bound games"?

 

[petepete]

Was on the hype train but after these reviews I got the 7700k; A little underwhelming

 

[dozenfury]

amd Ryzen has better gaming performance than intel (yes I said it - read few more lines before respond...)... lest say you wanna i7-6900K type of CPU performance (obviously your primary need is rendering and crunching, not gaming)... and then you want to game with same system... lets put that in numbers:
intels:
1000$ CPU (not a dime less for such a CPU performance)
300$ (cheapest X99 mobos)
600$ GTX 1080 (because most reviews used only these card for their Ryzen gaming testing)
lets asume that others (case, cooling, ram, psu, fans etc) are equall for both systems.
total = 1900$ (without others - that should be same)

amd:
399$ 1700X
200$ mobo
1300$ for one Titan XP or even two GTX 1080 Ti's


now we have 1900$ vs 1900$ system with similar CPU performance (for rendering and crunching - what is primary objective for CPU's liek these)... and which system will push more frames now? the one with single gtx 1080 or the one with GTX 1080 Ti's x2 or with Titan XP ???

That's hardly an apples to apples comparison. Ryzen isn't that much faster in rendering and crunching to justify that. Plus the above still doesn't fix Ryzen for single-threaded cpu bottlenecked games like wow. A more fair comparison would be a 7700K+1080 to a 1800X+1080ti. Those would be within $50 of each other and be more comparable in performance.

I also don't buy the "devs have to code for our cpu" excuse. AMD might sponsor or give cash to a dev for a particular game to tune it for their game (like AMD did with Hitman), but cpu performance shouldn't ever be reliant on that. IPC is what it is, there's no magic wand in code to fix it. When people want to run an app or game they want to run it knowing roughly what performance they can expect from their cpu, not have to check a list or wonder if the particular app or game happened to be tuned for Ryzen. If that were the case people including me would barely consider Ryzen for 1/2 the current retail price.

AMD would be more credible imo if they admitted that the gaming shortcomings, focus on the crunching/rendering lead, and take the angle that this is the first wave of Ryzen chips and that faster IPC chips will be coming in future Ryzen releases. Although it's not a great message, at least it's less disingenuous than insinuating major performance jumps in cpu benchmarks somehow from a patch. Unless a patch can make the Ryzen oc ceiling go from 3.9/4.0 to 5.0 Ghz I don't see it happening. BTW what happened to "5.0 on air" in their marketing? It turned out to be 5.0 on LN2...

 

[RejZoR]

any particular reason why?

Because that's what most gamers have. You see here that people have GTX 1080 en mass, but reality is, most gamers have mid-high tier cards. It's why AMD focused on RX480 only the last round and it worked out great for them. Because that's what majority buys.

I just LOVE it when people say things like "developers should optimize their games better" and "developers should learn to multithread their games better" as if it were stupendously easy and totally viable in every case. For big studios, they could probably do better, although most of them are working on old ass APIs and engines that are simply limited in scope, and switching either of these would seriously disrupt their workflow, which in turn would set them back on timelines and $$$. For Indie games, they don't need 16 threads. Most of them barely need two.

Sure, you can't always use X threads. But the fact is, when majority of systems these days run crappy quad cores, thanks to Intel insisting on such design. With AMD pushing 8 cores and 16 threads so hard, things might and also will change.

Also an interesting thing, yesterday I've started playing game "Infested Planet" and indie 2D strategy game with massive swarms of aliens and it can utilize up to 4 cores. And I think it actually needs that because it's pushing my 5820K quite hard when massive swarms of aliens flow through map obstacles. It's almost like watching liquid move around. It's quite nice actually. The reason they can't really use more is because not many could utilize that properly.

quite a statement to make, what do you base this on?

Haven't you learned anything from the RX480 ? The whole reason why AMD focused on that is because MAJORITY of people buy that. You see tons of us having high end cards here, but out there among normies, they mostly buy big ass CPU's with many cores and then they buy graphic card with the most VRAM. Even if it's a model with 16 shader units and barely runs Solitaire at 60fps...