Navi H.W.S

[Dicehunter]

So AMD came out with a new beta driver, 20.5.1 HWS, Thanks to Neverbackdown for posting this in Quick News, Enabling hardware accelerated GPU scheduling on Navi GPU's, Sorry Vega and Polaris owners, No support just yet.

I uninstalled the previous driver, Booted into safe mode, Ran DDU and then installed the beta driver.

Upon boot I made sure all graphics options in the driver control panel were at default minus V-Sync which I made sure was off along with Freesync being off, In the Wattman section I left everything alone minus power target which I set to the max of 50%+ and the fan to 100%.

All system fans and CPU cooler fans were also set to 100% to make sure thermals were not an issue.

I ran each test 8 x times, 4 x with HWS enabled and 4 x with HWS disabled and took the average score.

System Specs -

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 - 3950X - Precision Boost Overdrive Enabled

Motherboard: Asus ROG Crosshair Hero VIII X570 *latest bios*

Memory: 16GB *2x8GB* Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro @ 3200MHz

Storage: WD Black NVME SN750 with Heatsink - 1TB

GPU: XFX 5700XT Thicc III Ultra

OS : Windows 10 Pro - Fully up to date


Driver - https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-20-5-1-ghs-beta


Cryteks Noir RT benchmark - No HWS

Cryteks Noir RT benchmark - HWS Enabled

Star Control Origins Benchmark - No HWS

Star Control Origins Benchmark -HWS Enabled

Tom Clancy's The Division 2 Benchmark - No HWS

Tom Clancy's The Division 2 Benchmark - HWS Enabled

Unigine Valley Benchmark - No HWS

Ungine Valley - HWS Enabled

So in conclusion not really anything to shout about, The games/benchmarks "felt" smoother although this could be a total placebo, The only game/benchmark that gave a consistent improvement over the 8 runs, 4 x with HWS on and 4 x with HWS off, Was Unigine Valley, Across all tests its minimum FPS was 6FPS faster with HWS enabled, The Division 2 is the only game that exhibited a bit of a bug but it was a non issue when it came to performance, Apparently the games benchmark cannot read GPU usage correctly when HWS is enabled.

 

[Damien c]

I have noticed since I turned this option on that Destiny 2 seems to be taking longer to load in to places, but I am going to try it with it disabled tonight and see what happens.


It could just be Destiny 2 being bad with loading times again.

 

[Warchild]

6fps isnt even worth mentioning given that you always have a +/- tolerance.

Nice analysis though. Curious if you would see benefits if you limited the PCI E bandwidth.

 

[Dicehunter]

I have noticed since I turned this option on that Destiny 2 seems to be taking longer to load in to places, but I am going to try it with it disabled tonight and see what happens.

It could just be Destiny 2 being bad with loading times again.

Destiny 2's problem is Bungie, They are inept.

6fps isnt even worth mentioning given that you always have a +/- tolerance.

Nice analysis though. Curious if you would see benefits if you limited the PCI E bandwidth.

Across the 8 runs for each benchmark, 4 x with HWS disabled and 4 x with it enabled, It was a consistent 6FPS gain with HWS enabled in Unigine Valley hence why I mentioned it, Absolutely tiny gain but it was consistent.

 

[NeverBackDown]

6fps isnt even worth mentioning given that you always have a +/- tolerance.

Nice analysis though. Curious if you would see benefits if you limited the PCI E bandwidth.

Oh that would be interesting. If bandwidth would mean anything to performance.


Good job though Dice. It's clear games are made in mind using Windows to handle it alongside the drivers. I'm guessing they need to use the HWS actively so they can take advantage of it. Otherwise the games default to what they are programmed for. Just my guess.

 

[Warchild]

Oh that would be interesting. If bandwidth would mean anything to performance.


Good job though Dice. It's clear games are made in mind using Windows to handle it alongside the drivers. I'm guessing they need to use the HWS actively so they can take advantage of it. Otherwise the games default to what they are programmed for. Just my guess.

My thinking is that we are adopting NVME, M.2 drives, sound cards and really using up the lanes now. So perhaps it would only improve things by 1 or 2%. However to some, that is essential and, its basically free performance if it requires nothing on our part.

 

[Bartacus]

Cool beans Dice! I'm guessing this wouldn't work on my Radeon VII.

 

[Dicehunter]

Cool beans Dice! I'm guessing this wouldn't work on my Radeon VII.

Nope, Navi only for the moment, It may come to Vega though, No clue yet TBH.