Game Ready
Best gaming experience for Killing Floor 2

New GeForce GPU
Supports the new GeForce GTX 980 for notebooks, based upon the second-generation Maxwell architecture

GameWorks VR Support
Updated driver support for GameWorks VR SDK, adding notebook support, VR SLI enhancements, and bug fixes.

Windows 10 Fixed Issues
***61557; [355.82] Memory clock reported as 0 MHz if P-state is P0. At times, same report with
P2 P-state. [200135032]
***61557; [353.62, GM204] Thunderbird mail client is choppy when G-Sync windowed mode is
enabled. [1673997]
***61557; [SLI, Stereo] Batman: Arkham Origins crashes when launched from task bar following
an Alt+Tab. [1673119]

Windows 8.1/Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Vista Fixed Issues
***61557; [355.82] Memory clock reported as 0 MHz if P-state is P0. At times, same report with
P2 P-state. [200135032]
***61557; [Star Wars: Battlefront SLI Profile] Reflection envmaps flicker. [1676284]
***61557; [353.62, GM204] Thunderbird mail client is choppy when G-Sync windowed mode is
enabled. [1673997]

Regarding batches, we use the term batches just because we are counting both draw calls and dispatch calls. Dispatch calls are compute shaders, draw calls are normal graphics shaders. Though sometimes everyone calls dispatchs draw calls, they are different so we thought we'd avoid the confusion by calling everything a draw call.

Regarding CPU load balancing on D3D12, that's entirely the applications responsibility. So if you see a case where it’s not load balancing, it’s probably the application not the driver/API. We’ve done some additional tunes to the engine even in the last month and can clearly see usage cases where we can load 8 cores at maybe 90-95% load. Getting to 90% on an 8 core machine makes us really happy. Keeping our application tuned to scale like this definitely on ongoing effort.

Additionally, hitches and stalls are largely the applications responsibility under D3D12. In D3D12, essentially everything that could cause a stall has been removed from the API. For example, the pipeline objects are designed such that the dreaded shader recompiles won’t ever have to happen. We also have precise control over how long a graphics command is queued up. This is pretty important for VR applications.

Also keep in mind that the memory model for D3d12 is completely different the D3D11, at an OS level. I’m not sure if you can honestly compare things like memory load against each other. In D3D12 we have more control over residency and we may, for example, intentionally keep something unused resident so that there is no chance of a micro-stutter if that resource is needed. There is no reliable way to do this in D3D11. Thus, comparing memory residency between the two APIS may not be meaningful, at least not until everyone's had a chance to really tune things for the new paradigm.

Regarding SLI and cross fire situations, yes support is coming. However, those options in the ini file probablly do not do what you think they do, just FYI. Some posters here have been remarkably perceptive on different multi-GPU modes that are coming, and let me just say that we are looking beyond just the standard Crossfire and SLI configurations of today. We think that Multi-GPU situations are an area where D3D12 will really shine. (once we get all the kinks ironed out, of course). I can't promise when this support will be unvieled, but we are commited to doing it right.

Regarding Async compute, a couple of points on this. FIrst, though we are the first D3D12 title, I wouldn't hold us up as the prime example of this feature. There are probably better demonstrations of it. This is a pretty complex topic and to fully understand it will require significant understanding of the particular GPU in question that only an IHV can provide. I certainly wouldn't hold Ashes up as the premier example of this feature.

We actually just chatted with Nvidia about Async Compute, indeed the driver hasn't fully implemented it yet, but it appeared like it was. We are working closely with them as they fully implement Async Compute. We'll keep everyone posted as we learn more.

Also, we are pleased that D3D12 support on Ashes should be functional on Intel hardware relatively soon, (actually, it's functional now it's just a matter of getting the right driver out to the public).

Thanks!

Wow, there are lots of posts here, so I'll only respond to the last one. The interest in this subject is higher then we thought. The primary evolution of the benchmark is for our own internal testing, so it's pretty important that it be representative of the gameplay. To keep things clean, I'm not going to make very many comments on the concept of bias and fairness, as it can completely go down a rat hole.

Certainly I could see how one might see that we are working closer with one hardware vendor then the other, but the numbers don't really bare that out. Since we've started, I think we've had about 3 site visits from NVidia, 3 from AMD, and 2 from Intel ( and 0 from Microsoft, but they never come visit anyone ;(). Nvidia was actually a far more active collaborator over the summer then AMD was, If you judged from email traffic and code-checkins, you'd draw the conclusion we were working closer with Nvidia rather than AMD wink.gif As you've pointed out, there does exist a marketing agreement between Stardock (our publisher) for Ashes with AMD. But this is typical of almost every major PC game I've ever worked on (Civ 5 had a marketing agreement with NVidia, for example). Without getting into the specifics, I believe the primary goal of AMD is to promote D3D12 titles as they have also lined up a few other D3D12 games.

If you use this metric, however, given Nvidia's promotions with Unreal (and integration with Gameworks) you'd have to say that every Unreal game is biased, not to mention virtually every game that's commonly used as a benchmark since most of them have a promotion agreement with someone. Certainly, one might argue that Unreal being an engine with many titles should give it particular weight, and I wouldn't disagree. However, Ashes is not the only game being developed with Nitrous. It is also being used in several additional titles right now, the only announced one being the Star Control reboot. (Which I am super excited about! But that's a completely other topic wink.gif).

Personally, I think one could just as easily make the claim that we were biased toward Nvidia as the only 'vendor' specific code is for Nvidia where we had to shutdown async compute. By vendor specific, I mean a case where we look at the Vendor ID and make changes to our rendering path. Curiously, their driver reported this feature was functional but attempting to use it was an unmitigated disaster in terms of performance and conformance so we shut it down on their hardware. As far as I know, Maxwell doesn't really have Async Compute so I don't know why their driver was trying to expose that. The only other thing that is different between them is that Nvidia does fall into Tier 2 class binding hardware instead of Tier 3 like AMD which requires a little bit more CPU overhead in D3D12, but I don't think it ended up being very significant. This isn't a vendor specific path, as it's responding to capabilities the driver reports.

From our perspective, one of the surprising things about the results is just how good Nvidia's DX11 perf is. But that's a very recent development, with huge CPU perf improvements over the last month. Still, DX12 CPU overhead is still far far better on Nvidia, and we haven't even tuned it as much as DX11. The other surprise is that of the min frame times having the 290X beat out the 980 Ti (as reported on Ars Techinica). Unlike DX11, minimum frame times are mostly an application controlled feature so I was expecting it to be close to identical. This would appear to be GPU side variance, rather then software variance. We'll have to dig into this one.

I suspect that one thing that is helping AMD on GPU performance is D3D12 exposes Async Compute, which D3D11 did not. Ashes uses a modest amount of it, which gave us a noticeable perf improvement. It was mostly opportunistic where we just took a few compute tasks we were already doing and made them asynchronous, Ashes really isn't a poster-child for advanced GCN features.

Our use of Async Compute, however, pales with comparisons to some of the things which the console guys are starting to do. Most of those haven't made their way to the PC yet, but I've heard of developers getting 30% GPU performance by using Async Compute. Too early to tell, of course, but it could end being pretty disruptive in a year or so as these GCN built and optimized engines start coming to the PC. I don't think Unreal titles will show this very much though, so likely we'll have to wait to see. Has anyone profiled Ark yet?

In the end, I think everyone has to give AMD alot of credit for not objecting to our collaborative effort with Nvidia even though the game had a marketing deal with them. They never once complained about it, and it certainly would have been within their right to do so. (Complain, anyway, we would have still done it, wink.gif)

P.S. There is no war of words between us and Nvidia. Nvidia made some incorrect statements, and at this point they will not dispute our position if you ask their PR. That is, they are not disputing anything in our blog. I believe the initial confusion was because Nvidia PR was putting pressure on us to disable certain settings in the benchmark, when we refused, I think they took it a little too personally.