AMD Radeon Linux Gaming Performance On Mesa 20.1 Looking Good With RADV+ACO

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Radeon Linux Gaming Performance On Mesa 20.1 Looking Good With RADV+ACO

Since its mainlining in Mesa 20.0, the Valve-backed ACO compiler back-end for the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver has been helping to reduce game load times and often increasing overall Linux gaming performance both for native titles as well as those on Steam Play with Proton+DXVK/VKD3D. With Mesa 20.1 releasing in the coming weeks, here are some recent benchmarks showing the RADV+ACO performance on Mesa 20.1-devel compared to RADV using its default AMDGPU LLVM back-end.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=29134

[TemplarGR]

While ACO can improve framerate the most important benefit is the reduced compile times and perhaps a better compatibility with various games. I think for 20.2 it could be enabled by default if devs are willing. Now let's hope they port it to radeonsi as well. I think it is even more needed there, the compile times for radeonsi are currently bad.

[L_A_G]

The level of improvement that Vega 56 has gotten leads me to believe something they've done must have un-blocked a bottleneck somewhere for the Vega 56.

[blacknova]

Interesting, Polaris and Vega arch benefited from ACO much more than Navi. Were ACO development and optimization mainly targeted for these cards?

[skeevy420]

The important numbers are how ACO almost always has the better minimum frame times.

Who cares if a game can hit 189 fps if it keeps dipping down to 12 fps leading to an unenjoyable screenshot experience?

[CochainComplex]

The important numbers are how ACO almost always has the better minimum frame times.

Who cares if a game can hit 189 fps if it keeps dipping down to 12 fps leading to an unenjoyable screenshot experience?

With my lizard eyes I cant even say 240 fps is smooth.

Yes the 1% Low is important. Or if not some kind of freesync is applied, sudden changes.

[TemplarGR]

With my lizard eyes I cant even say 240 fps is smooth.

Yes the 1% Low is important. Or if not some kind of freesync is applied, sudden changes.

If 240 fps aren't smooth enough for you, you don't have lizard eyes, you have robotic eyes....

People don't notice the difference much in such high framerates. What people say when they talk about smoothness is the input lag. Low framerates make input lag more noticeable, since it takes longer for the result of your input to show to the monitor. While a high framerate means that any micro-move you make will instantly appear on the screen.

So it is not really about the eyes, it is about the hands.

[Raka555]

If 240 fps aren't smooth enough for you, you don't have lizard eyes, you have robotic eyes....

People don't notice the difference much in such high framerates. What people say when they talk about smoothness is the input lag. Low framerates make input lag more noticeable, since it takes longer for the result of your input to show to the monitor. While a high framerate means that any micro-move you make will instantly appear on the screen.

So it is not really about the eyes, it is about the hands.

I always play with vsync on and I can notice a bit of input lag, but can live with it for the most part.

What is interesting to me is that "back in the days" we played with 25-30 fps and it was buttery smooth.
Not sure how it was achieved, but I remember something about "hardware cursors".
I think they had a way to update the cursor position just before they updated the screen, so it felt smooth, but I don't know.

Edit: Maybe input lag is more noticeable on higher resolutions as we played on 1024x768

[nranger]

If 240 fps aren't smooth enough for you, you don't have lizard eyes, you have robotic eyes....

People don't notice the difference much in such high framerates. What people say when they talk about smoothness is the input lag...

Indeed, humans are incredibly analog. Our perceptive abilities vary greatly depending on movement, brightness, contrast, kinesthetics, etc.

As you mention, input lag is a huge deal. Another one is pixel persistence. Too many monitors today advertise 144, 165, or 240Hz, but they have pixels that can only switch certain colors or brightness levels at the equivalent of 100 or 120Hz. LCDs are far superior to CRTs for sharpness, resolution, and contrast, but only in the last few years have they matched CRT technology when it comes to motion clarity.

[Veto]

What is interesting to me is that "back in the days" we played with 25-30 fps and it was buttery smooth.

No it wasn't. You just remember it so, because that was the state of the art back then. If in doubt, you should try playing some old games again and lower the resolution and frame rate to fit.

However, CRTs had some benefit due to hiding the low frame rates in flicker, whereas LCDs can appear more to have more judder due to the lack of flicker. Also some LCDs have ghosting. And way back, the 2D games where tightly designed and synced to the vertical refresh, so that they appeared more fluid.

Edit: BTW the flicker effect is also used in cinema, where they hide the insanely low frame rate (~24 fps) by displaying each image twice. However, when going to a theater, I still get crazy by the amount of judder in movies e.g. when panning.