NVIDIA vs. AMD OpenGL & Vulkan Benchmarks With Valve's Dota 2

[dang_valve]

Can you (or anyone else) upload somewhere a relevant timedemo so we (and Michael) can use it?

Sure, there are two timedemos I have been using for my testing. The first is from a match from the Global eSports Cup Finals: https://app.box.com/s/cb630qqnftmxuv3twbpf9celqe8l673s

I use the command-line:

dota2 [-vulkan | -gl] +timedemo 1971360796 +timedemo_start 50000 +timedemo_end 51000 +cl_showfps 2 +fps_max 0 -novconsole -noassert -nosound

The other timedemo which is a very heavy battle scene from the Frankfurt Majors and tends to be quite CPU limited: https://app.box.com/s/pd01jt9nlqc8dmjhyctl4rlmlt6jb0p1

For this one I use the command-line:

dota2 [-vulkan | -gl] +timedemo OctPerf +timedemo_start 46800 +timedemo_end 47000 +cl_showfps 2 +fps_max 0 -novconsole -noassert -nosound

[bug77]

Noone said "at the expense of", but you will surely get wider gains at higher overheads. It makes much more sense to test the more profitable scenarios considering it's an early implementation, far from being perfect.

Precisely because it's a new implementation, any testing goes. If anything, it's more likely the developers have the more common scenarios well covered and you'll find more issues as you approach the corner cases.

[dimko]

Also - as a second thought. Since Vulkan renderers are multithreaded, and CPU overhead is lower - I wonder if the CPU governor has a bit more to play?

I might be blind but I could not see anything in the article about which CPU governor was used. It would be interesting to how different power states affect the game.

TO Michael: boxie raised interesting point.

I have seen situations where CPU governor reduced CPU speed for power saving since CPU utilisation was very low and it did affect performance of GPU big time.

[dimko]

Useful for all those who play Dota 2 on a CRT screen.

like all 5 of them :P

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

If you have a 1080p display and any of the GPUs that were tested, you don't need Vulkan.

Why not? Anything that frees up CPU cycles is good in my book. Dota 2 isn't all that CPU hungry but plenty of other titles are, those would benefit from freed up CPU cycles even ater "lower" resolutions like 1080p. Prison Architect, Rimworld and other sandbox titles like them are very CPU hungry. Not everybody plays MOBA titles, you know?

[cj.wijtmans]

The problem with 1080p is that many benchmarks show CPU limits, might be fine to compare against Vulkan if those are less important now but for many OpenGL tests you would need a highly OC CPU to see differences between GPUs.

In my gaming my CPU is never ever the bottleneck. Even in cpu intensive games.

[Kano]

Do you use GTX 970 and better?

[liam]

I agree =D

And there's certainy lots for Michael to take away from the feedback regardless, especially since a Valve employee is posting.

Has there ever been a rapport wiht Valve since Michael visited? Why aren't they sharing resource enough to build PTS in to a damn fine testing engine for at least Valve games. The feedback to both party's, and benefit's to Valve along wiht the community would be worth their weight in gold.

You're right, but, especially lately, Michael seems on the verge of burnout. Personally, putting empathy completely aside for a moment, I'd rather that didn't happen.
I was attempting to make a plea to those folks who frequent these boards to contribute towards making the tests he runs BETTER.
Contributions can be code, design work (his graphs and color choosing algorithm are still pretty rough), test profiles, whatever.
If anyone is interested I can create a trello instance (or whatever your organizing platform of choice might be) so we can see what would people actually want, how hard it would be to do it (obviously with a large error bar attached to that one), etc.

[mibo]

...
I use the command-line:
dota2 [-vulkan | -gl] +timedemo 1971360796 +timedemo_start 50000 +timedemo_end 51000 +cl_showfps 2 +fps_max 0 -novconsole -noassert -nosound

For this one I use the command-line:
dota2 [-vulkan | -gl] +timedemo OctPerf +timedemo_start 46800 +timedemo_end 47000 +cl_showfps 2 +fps_max 0 -novconsole -noassert -nosound

Can somebody explain to me how to run those command lines from a terminal?
Usually, I start games from the steam UI. But setting the launch options did not work.
From the terminal I tried: steam steam://rungameid/570 +timedemo 1971360796 +timedemo_start 50000 +timedemo_end 51000 +cl_showfps 2 +fps_max 0 -novconsole -noassert -nosound
This also did not work...

[schmidtbag]

Why not? Anything that frees up CPU cycles is good in my book. Dota 2 isn't all that CPU hungry but plenty of other titles are, those would benefit from freed up CPU cycles even ater "lower" resolutions like 1080p. Prison Architect, Rimworld and other sandbox titles like them are very CPU hungry. Not everybody plays MOBA titles, you know?

Sure, but my point was you don't NEED Vulkan for such situations. Anything to increase efficiency is a plus in my book, but when I'm playing a game I just want it to simply play at 60FPS at highest detail. In most cases, I can get that without Vulkan.

And for the record, I have never played any MOBAs.