The problem with 'dumb' metrics (An argument against using GPU busy)...

With the recent release of the new updated beta version of Presentmon by Intel to include their new metric, GPU Busy, many people have become excited about the potential for it to have some sort of positive impact on the game review and user diagnostic testing landscapes.

However, if you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed how I've not been impressed by the execution surrounding this metric - something which I think many people might have missed in the hubbub for something new and meaningful in system performance assessments.

This is the story of how dangerous undefined metrics can be in the wrong hands...

Starfield Performance Analysis...

Starfield has been a much anticipated title for a number of years now but the hype, counter-hype and social media battles have been raging pretty strongly around this one since it was made an Xbox and PC exclusive. 

Normally, though, those concerns usually melt away shortly after launch when players can actually get their hands on the game and just play. In Starfield's case, this hasn't been quite the experience - there are many players who are struggling to run the game because it can be quite demanding of PC hardware. There are raging debates as to whether the problem lies with the developers, the engine, or the hardware manufacturers...

Since I had my savegame destroyed in Baldur's Gate 3 and didn't feel like repeating thirty hours of gametime I instead decided to switch over to Starfield for a change in pace. As a happy coincidence, I have a lot of familiarity with prior Bethesda Game Studios titles and a penchant for testing on various hardware configurations... and it just so happens that I have a new testing rig (mostly) up and running so it has turned out that Starfield is a prime target for the shakedown of this new testing capability...

What went wrong with RDNA 3...?

Much has been made about the performance, or lack thereof, in the RDNA 3 architecture. Before launch, rumours persisted of 3+ GHz core clocks, and I had tried to make sense of them at the time - to no avail, leading to predictions that were around 2x the performance of the RX 6900 XT. 

Additionally, people (aka leakers) were really misunderstanding the doubling of FP32 units in each workgroup processor and so were counting more than actually existed in terms of real throughput performance and, I think it's safe to say that this decision from AMD was a disaster from a consumer standpoint. 

But is that really the reason RDNA 3 has been less performant than expected? Let's take a look!

Let's Talk about System Requirements...

Everyone and their mother, cousin, friend, associate, partner, and long-lost relation has had strong opinions on System Requirements.. Hell, I'm right there with them! We all want detailed listings of settings combined with PC hardware... However, as a group, I think we are a bit too happy when developers give us more than nothing to work with.

So, I want to set the record straight on what are good system requirements for games... and I hope that some developers see this and take the advice on board.

The Performance uplift of Ada Lovelace over Ampere...

 

One thing i feel like I may have been known for is being one of the first people to comment on the fact that there was no "IPC" uplift for AMD's RDNA 2 over RDNA architecture. Well, I never had an RX 5000 series card to check with but Hardware Unboxed confirmed this in practice. So, it was nice to feel validated. 

Now, I am aware that RDNA 3 is nothng more than a frequency adjusted RDNA2 (because their extra FP32 configurations do not appear to be easily used in existing programmes), but the question still burns within me: have Nvidia been able to increase the performance of their architecture from Ampere to Lovelace?

Let's find out...