AMD Releases Catalyst 14.9.2 Beta Drivers
Otherwise these drivers do contain a handful of other Crossfire fixes, including fixes for Total War: Rome 2, Alien: Isolation, and Shadow of Mordor.
As usual, you can grab these drivers over at AMD’s website.
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Civilization: Beyond Earth CrossFire with Mantle SFR: Not Actually Broken!
We could ask why manual editing of the INI file is even necessary, and there are other user interface items that would be nice to address as well as I noted in the conclusion of the original Benchmarked article. But that's all water under the bridge at this point, so let me issue a public apology for not having the complete information yesterday.
I've updated the text of the original article (and added a discussion of minimum frame rates in case you missed that), but since many people have potentially read the article already and are unlikely to revisit the subject, I wanted to post a separate Pipeline to update everyone on the true performance of CrossFire with Mantle and SFR. But before we get to that, let me also take this opportunity to provide some of the additional information from Firaxis and AMD on why SFR matters. Firaxis has a couple blog posts on the subject (including one highlighting the benefits of Mantle with multiple GPUs), and here's the direct quote from AMD's marketing folks:
With
a traditional graphics API, multi-GPU (MGPU) arrays like AMD CrossFire
are typically utilized with a rendering method called "alternate-frame
rendering" (AFR). AFR renders odd frames on the first GPU, and even
frames on the second GPU. Parallelizing a game’s workload across two
GPUs working in tandem has obvious performance benefits.
As AFR requires frames to be rendered in advance, this approach can occasionally suffer from some issues:
- Large queue depths can reduce the responsiveness of the user’s mouse input
- The game’s design might not accommodate a queue sufficient for good MGPU scaling
- Predicted frames in the queue may not be useful to the current state of the user’s movement or camera
Thankfully, AFR is not
the only approach to multi-GPU. Mantle empowers game developers with
full control of a multi-GPU array and the ability to create or implement
unique MGPU solutions that fit the needs of the game engine. In
Civilization: Beyond Earth, Firaxis designed a "split-frame rendering"
(SFR) subsystem. SFR divides each frame of a scene into proportional
sections, and assigns a rendering slice to each GPU in AMD CrossFire
configuration. The "master" GPU quickly receives the work of each GPU
and composites the final scene for the user to see on his or her
monitor.
If you
don’t see 70-100% GPU scaling, that is working as intended, according to
Firaxis. Civilization: Beyond Earth’s GPU-oriented workloads are not as
demanding as other recent PC titles. However, Beyond Earth’s design
generates a considerable amount of work in the producer thread. The
producer thread tracks API calls from the game and lines them up,
through the CPU, for the GPU’s consumer thread to do graphics work. This
producer thread vs. consumer thread workload balance is what
establishes Civilization as a CPU-sensitive title (vs. a GPU-sensitive
one).
Because the
game emphasizes CPU performance, the rendering workloads may not fully
utilize the capacity of a high-end GPU. In essence, there is no work
leftover for the second GPU. However, in cases where the GPU workload is
high and a frame might take a while to render (affecting user input
latency), the decision to use SFR cuts input latency in half, because
there is no long AFR queue to work through. The queue is essentially one
frame, each GPU handling a half. This will keep the game smooth and
responsive, emphasizing playability, vs. raw frame rates.
Let
me provide an example. Let’s say a frame takes 60 milliseconds to
render, and you have an AFR queue depth of two frames. That means the
user will experience 120ms of lag between the time they move the map and
that movement is reflected on-screen. Firaxis’ decision to use SFR
halves the queue down to one frame, reducing the input latency to 60ms.
And because each GPU is working on half the frame, the queue is reduced
by half again to just 30ms.
In
this way the game will feel very smooth and responsive, because raw
frame-rate scaling was not the goal of this title. Smooth, playable
performance was the goal. This is one of the unique approaches to MGPU
that AMD has been extolling in the era of Mantle and other similar APIs.
When I first read the above, my initial reaction was: "This is awesome!" I've always been a bit leery of AFR and the increase in input latency that it can create, so using SFR to avoid the issue is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, it requires more work and testing to get it working right, so most games simply stick with AFR. Ironically, while reducing input latency is never a bad thing, it honestly doesn't matter nearly as much in a turn-based strategy game like Civilization: Beyond Earth. What we'd really love to see is use of techniques like SFR to reduce input latency on games from genres where input latency is a bigger deal – first-person games like Crysis, Battlefield, Far Cry, etc. and third-person games like Batman, Shadow of Mordor, Assassin's Creed, etc. being prime examples. With that said, let's revisit the subject of Civilization: Beyond Earth and CrossFire performance, with and without Mantle:
Our graphing engine doesn't allow for sorting on multiple criteria, otherwise I might try sorting by average + minimum frame rate. Regardless, you can see that across the range of options the CrossFire Mantle SFR support is now doing what we'd expect and improving frame rates. But it's not just about improving frame rates; as the above commentary notes, improving input latency is also important. We aren't really equipped to test for input latency (that would require a very high speed camera as well as additional time filming and measuring input latency), but the minimum frame rates definitely improve as well.
What's interesting is that CrossFire without Mantle (which uses AFR) has higher average FPS in many cases, but the minimum frame rates are worse than with a single GPU. The two images above show why this isn't necessarily a good thing. We haven't tested SLI performance, but I have at least one source that says SLI performance is similar to CrossFire AFR: higher average FPS but lower minimum FPS. It's entirely possible that driver updates will improve the situation with D3D, but for now CrossFire with Mantle SFR definitely scores a win over Direct3D AFR as it provides for a smoother gaming experience.
Let's look at the above charts in a different format before we continue this discussion.
We can see that even with just two GPUs splitting the workload, our CPU has apparently become a bottleneck with the R9 290X. Average frame rates still show an increase going from 4K Ultra to QHD Ultra to 1080p Ultra to 1080p High, but when we look at minimum FPS we've apparently run straight into a wall. For the R9 290X with Mantle, CrossFire effectively tops out with a minimum FPS of roughly 65FPS while a single GPU hits a lower minimum of around 50FPS without Mantle, and regular CrossFire on the 290X (i.e. without Mantle) has a minimum of 45FPS. Again, there are likely some optimizations that could be made in both drivers and the game to improve the situation, but it wouldn't be too surprising to find that Mantle and SFR with three or four GPUs doesn't show much of an increase over two GPUs.
I do have to wonder how applicable the above results are to other games. Last I checked, Mantle CrossFire rendering on Sniper Elite 3 was basically not working, but if other software developers can use Mantle to effectively implement SFR instead of AFR that would be nice to see. But didn't we have SFR way back in the early days of multiple GPUs? Of course we did! 3dfx initially called their solution SLI – Scan Line Interleave – and had each GPU rendering every other line. That approach had problems with things like anti-aliasing, but there are many other ways to divide the workload between GPUs, and both AMD (formerly ATI) and NVIDIA have done variations on SFR in the past.
The problem is that when DirectX 9 rolled around and we started getting programmable shaders and deferred rendering, at some point synchronization issues cropped up and basically developers were locked out of doing creative things like SFR (or geometry processing on one GPU and rendering on another). The only thing you can do with multiple GPUs using Direct3D right now is AFR. That may change with Direct3D 12, but we're still a ways out from that release. Basically, AFR is the easiest approach to implement, but it has various drawbacks even when it does work properly.
Of course there are other potential pitfalls with doing alternative workload splitting like SFR. They can require more work from the CPU, and as you add GPUs the CPU already creates a potential bottleneck. AMD informed us that the engine in Civilization: Beyond Earth is actually extremely scalable with CPU cores, so while we're testing with an overclocked i7-4770K, AMD said they even saw a 20% improvement in performance (with Mantle) going from hex-core Ivy Bridge-E to octal-core Haswell-E with R9 290X CrossFire. There are apparently other cases where certain hardware configurations and game settings can result in an even greater improvement in performance thanks to Mantle (e.g. the 50% increase in minimum frame rates on the R9 290X at our 1080p High settings).
The bottom line is that if you have an AMD GPU, games like Civilization: Beyond Earth can certainly benefit. Maybe Direct3D 12 will bring similar options to developers next year, but in the meantime, congrats to both AMD and Firaxis for shining the light on the latency subject once again. NVIDIA made some waves with similar discussions when they released FCAT last year, but the topic of latency and jitters is definitely important – and don't even get me started on silliness like capping frame rates at 30FPS by default (cough, The Evil Within, cough).
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GIGABYTE BRIX GB-BXBT-1900 Review: A Bay Trail UCFF PC
Over the last couple of years, the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) has emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Intel kickstarted the category with their Sandy Bridge NUC kits in early 2013. Recognizing the popularity of this segment, other vendors also began to promote similar products. GIGABYTE targets this market segment with an extensive lineup of products under the BRIX brand. We recently looked at the high-end Haswell BRIX, the GB-BXi7-4500. Today, we will take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum - the Bay Trail-D Celeron J1900-based GB-BXBT-1900. As a note, due to GIGABYTE's regional marketing policies, this model is currently not being sold in the North American market, but targets price conscious buyers everywhere else.
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Microsoft Q1 FY 2015 Financial Results: Record Revenue On Strong Consumer Sales
| Microsoft Q1 2015 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| Q1'2015 | Q4'2014 | Q1'2014 | |||
| Revenue (in Billions USD) | $23.201 | $23.382 | $18.529 | ||
| Operating Income (in Billions USD) | $5.844 | $6.482 | $6.334 | ||
| Gross Margin (in Billions USD) | $14.928 | $15.787 | $13.384 | ||
| Net Income (in Billions USD) | $4.540 | $4.612 | $5.244 | ||
| Margins | 64.3% | 67.5% | 72.2% | ||
| Basic Earnings per Share (in USD) | $0.55 | $0.55 | $0.63 | ||
Microsoft breaks their product and services into two divisions. Devices and Consumer focuses on end user products such as Xbox, Surface, Lumia phones, and the related consumer focused software options. Commercial focuses on enterprise which means Server, System Center, SQL, volume licensing, and other enterprise software and services.
Devices and Consumer (D&C) revenue grew 47% to $10.96 billion, as compared to Q1 2014. On the D&C Licensing segment, Windows OEM revenue was down 2%, however there was growth in the number of licenses sold. Microsoft changed the licensing fairly substantially during their 2014 fiscal year, which results in Windows being no cost for a lot of the lower cost devices. Windows OEM Pro licensing was down 4%, which the company feels is in-line with normal business PC replacement cycles. This would also not cover any businesses which utilize volume licensing, with that revenue falling under the Commercial branch. Continuing with licensing, Office Consumer revenue was down 5% for the quarter, with that loss being expected with the move to Office 365 for consumers. Windows Phone licensing revenue was down 46%, which is not unexpected when the operating system license fee was removed. The Gross Margin for D&C Licensing declined 3%, which Microsoft accounts for due to the end of the Nokia commercial license agreement with Nokia’s phone business being purchased last fiscal year. Overall, D&C Licensing revenue was down 9% to $4.09 billion.
The next D&C segment is Computing and Gaming Hardware, which is a look at the Surface and Xbox platforms. Surface enjoyed a strong quarter with revenue coming in at $908 million. Surface Pro 3 interest is strong, with Microsoft seeing good sales to students, professionals, and enterprise adoption of their latest tablet. Xbox sales were also up, with 2.4 million consoles sold in Q1. There was no break down of Xbox One vs 360 numbers provided. I’m sure Microsoft is hoping for better Xbox One sales, with the new console launching in 28 additional markets last quarter. This segment had a good quarter, with revenue up 74% to $2.45 billion, and Gross Margin was up 134% to $480 million.
Phone Hardware, which technically did not exist as part of Microsoft a year ago, had a solid quarter as well. Microsoft sold 9.3 million Lumias in Q1, which was a modest gain year-over-year. They are seeing better sales in Europe, and especially with the lower priced phones. It seems to be that this is where the Lumia brand is focused, with the majority of the product launches this year being lower cost devices. The former Nokia feature phone line “performed in line with the market for feature phones” and there was no additional information here. The Phone Hardware segment came in at $2.61 billion in revenue and had $480 million in Gross Margin, although the margin gain was partially from non-recurring items which means those gains will not carry forward for Q2.
The final consumer segment is D&C Other, which is the consumer cloud offerings from Microsoft. Office 365 Consumer (Personal and Home versions) is now up to 7 million active subscribers. This is a 25% gain from the previous quarter. This helps explain the traditional D&C Licensing drop for Office, with Microsoft seeing good success in the subscription model for Office. Search revenue was up 23% due to higher revenue per search in addition to search volume. Bing search share in the US was up 140 basis points to 19.4%. Worldwide figures were not given. Gross margin for the cloud offerings was down due to investments in online infrastructure, and clocked in at $310 million. Overall revenue was up 16% to $1.81 billion.
Commercial revenue is the bigger piece of the pie for Microsoft, and this side of the house had a revenue gain of 10%, with $12.28 billion in Q1. Gross margin for Commercial gained was up 9% to $9.91 billion. Breaking down the segment, Licensing was up 3% to $9.87 billion, with Server product revenue up 11% which was due to double-digit growth for SQL Server, System Center, and Windows Server. Windows Volume Licensing was up 10%, and Office Commercial products declined 7% due to the transition of customers to Office 365.
Commercial Other had a 50% revenue gain, with a Q1 revenue of $2.41 billion. This gain was heavily assisted by a 128% increase in Commercial Cloud revenue and the adoption of Office 365, and especially the higher priced SKUs. Customers are also purchasing additional cloud features such as Enterprise Mobility Suite and Azure Active Directory.
| Microsoft Q1 2014 Segment Overview (in Billions USD) | |||||
| Q1'2015 | Q4'2014 | Q1'2014 | Percentage for quarter | ||
| D&C Licensing Revenue | $4.09 | $4.90 | $4.48 | 17.6% | |
| D&C Licensing Gross Margin | $3.82 | $4.52 | $3.92 | 25.6% | |
| D&C Computing and Gaming Hardware Revenue | $2.45 | $1.34 | $1.41 | 10.6% | |
| D&C Computing and Gaming Hardware Gross Margin | $0.48 | $0.02 | $0.21 | 3.2% | |
| D&C Other Revenue | $1.81 | $1.76 | $1.55 | 7.8% | |
| D&C Other Gross Margin | $0.31 | $0.29 | $0.32 | 2.1% | |
| Phone Hardware Revenue | $2.61 | $1.99 | N/A | 11.2% | |
| Phone Hardware Gross Margin | $0.48 | $0.054 | N/A | 3.2% | |
| Commercial Licensing Revenue | $9.87 | $11.22 | $9.58 | 42.5% | |
| Commercial Other Revenue | $2.41 | $2.26 | $1.60 | 10.3% | |
| Commercial Overall Gross Margin | $9.91 | $10.99 | $9.08 | 66.3% | |
Fiscal Year 2015 has had a solid start for Microsoft, with record revenue for Q1. A little bit less impressive is the decline in net income. With a PC industry that has pretty much leveled off, the traditional businesses of Windows and Office are losing some of their luster. With Microsoft moving Windows to a no cost licensing model for lower cost PCs and smaller devices, we can expect Windows revenue to continue to drop over the next while. Low cost is generally higher volume, so this could mean a substantial decrease in revenue from the Windows team. However there are some good signs as well in the Consumer segment. Surface sales are almost at $1 billion for the quarter, but more importantly Surface is also making money. Anyone who follows Microsoft earnings will likely never forget the massive write down for the initial Surface lines, so it is promising to see the Surface team having some success. Also, as the traditional licensing method of Windows and Office has seen decreases, Microsoft’s cloud offerings are gaining a lot of traction and continue to see large gains in users and revenue.
On the Commercial side, it is interesting to see the strong gains because not only is the on-premise infrastructure seeing strong gains, with > 10% grown for Server, SQL, and System Center, the cloud based infrastructure, which at one point was thought to be a replacement for on-premise servers, also saw a 128% increase in revenue for the quarter. As companies move to the cloud for their computing needs, Microsoft has a strong offering here due to being able to provide both on-premise and cloud products that work together. It is fascinating to see double digit growth in a product like System Center, when someone looking in would assume a legacy product such as System Center, which is used to primarily manage desktops, would be replaced by a cloud solution like Microsoft Intune. Clearly businesses are seeing a need to expand into the cloud, but keep some or all of their existing infrastructure as well.
Unfortunately the Microsoft press release did not have any forward looking statements, as they were saved for the webcast which should be available by the end of Thursday. I will try and update this article with that information when it is released.
Source: Microsoft Investor Relations
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Investigating NVIDIA's BatteryBoost with MSI GT72
BatteryBoost initially launched with the GTX 800M series earlier this year, and our first look at the technology came with the MSI GT70 with GTX 880M. That may not have been the best starting point, and unfortunately most of the gaming notebooks we've looked at since then haven't been much better. Armed with the latest MSI GT72 sporting a Maxwell 2.0 GTX 980M, NVIDIA claims that BatteryBoost is finally going to hit the 2+ hours mark for gaming. Read on for our in-depth testing of BatteryBoost.
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Benchmarked - Civilization: Beyond Earth
One of the longest running gaming franchises around, the Civilization series goes all the way back to my high school years. There have been many changes along the way, but the core turn-based strategy gameplay remains. With this latest release, Civilization once again heads beyond the confines of our planet. What sort of hardware does it require to run the game, and does this fifth Mantle enabled title add anything new to the mix? That's what we're here to find out.
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CVS, Rite Aid Kill Unofficial Apple Pay Support, Burn Google Wallet Users in the Process
CVS, Rite Aid instruct stores to disable NFC capabilities at the register
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Amid Theater Boycott Netflix Defiantly Plans New Movies, Plus 3 TV Shows for 2015
Netflix has seen great success through exclusives like "Orange is the New Black" and "House of Cards"
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AT&T Defeats Purpose of New Apple SIM, Locks iPad Air 2 SIMs to Its Network
This is why we can't have nice things!
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Get Ready for "Microsoft Lumia" Smartphones in Next Few Months
Marketing chief says Microsoft is adopting a patient approach transitioning its product line
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Report: Samsung Galaxy S5 to Receive Android 5.0 Lollipop in December
Samsung also readying Lollipop update for Galaxy Note 4
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Dreadful Fire Phone Sales Lead to $170M Writedown for Amazon
Further confirmation that the Fire Phone has been a sales bomb
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Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen Donates $100M to Fight Raging Ebola Epidemic
Disease has claimed nearly 5,000 lives thus far in Africa as infections continue to rise
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Xiaomi Moves Data Out of China to Woo EU, America, Escape Security Concerns
The world's fifth largest smartphone maker wants foreign buyers to feel their data is safe
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Editorial: Tim Cook's Meeting w/ Top Chinese Official Over Recent Hack Highlights Growing Tensions
China needs Apple and Apple needs China., but the pair's marriage has grown complicated.
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Android Wear’s First Major Update Brings GPS, Offline Music Support
Google adds some extra functionality to Android Wear
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Microsoft to Discontinue Free, Ad-supported Xbox Music Service on December 1
Party time is over for Xbox Music users
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Christian Bale Confirmed to Play Steve Jobs in Upcoming Film
Aaron Sorkin to write the film's screenplay, while Danny Boyle will direct
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