The power curve of the RX 6800... and improving system energy use.

Again, literally what happens...

It may have escaped your notice that I picked up an RX 6800 last November. It's not been entirely smooth sailing, however: Two inexplicably dead DisplayPorts later*, I think I've managed to get a handle on the way in which to scale the RDNA 2 architecture.

*Completely unlinked to any tinkering on my part - since they happened when bringing the computer back from sleep - I don't keep my PC in sleep mode any longer. Never had a problem with it on my RTX 3070!

Last year, I looked at the power scaling of the RTX 3070 because I was conscious about getting the most out of my technology, with a focus on efficiency (both power and performance). So, I'm applying that same focus to the new piece of kit in my arsenal. Come along for the ride...

Analyse This: Forspoken Demo analysis...

I've been eagerly anticipating the release of the first DirectStorage title, mostly to see whether my prediction and/or understanding of the tech was correct or not. However, it seems like this particular DirectStorage implementation, much like Forsaken, itself, is a bit of a disappointment...

In the end, I did not splash out on the main game, given the very mixed reception and absolutely jam-packed release schedule for the first quarter of the year - I chose to spend my limited money on other titles that I actually might want to play/test, instead.

Luckily for me, Sqaure Enix released a PC demo and, while I am not entirely sure that everything is exactly the same between it and the main release, it is what I am able to test in this scenario. Perhaps the conclusions I will draw are limited because of it but I do sort of question whether there will be large codebase or engine optimisations available for the main release that are not part of the demo... But, let's see.

Next Gen PC gaming requirements (2022 update)

It's time for the yearly round-up of game recommended system specifications trending data! 

First up, I want to pay tribute to the person who helped inspire me to begin this yearly endeavour. It was his catalogging of the games released over a ten year period on Steam that jump-started this whole thing. He will be missed...

However, games keep being released and keep requiring more demanding hardware... so my sisyphean task remains.

Let's jump in!

Yearly DirectStorage rant (Part 3)...

Yeah, I know this is getting bothersome and tiring but, as we finally approach the release date of Forspoken - the first game to include DirectStorage as a way of managing data from the storage device on your PC - I've noticed a trend of people posting about the topic in a very uncritical manner.

So, let's take a quick look at that and let me tell you my doubts...

Analyse This: Does RAM speed and latency make a difference for gaming...? (Part 4)

 

Uber RAM...

I've looked at the performance of RAM speed over the last few entries and come to a few conclusions:

• People are wont to interpret data incorrectly - or too little data.
• On mid-range systems (or below): Pushing RAM to get the lowest possible latency (and system latency) in synthetic tests really does not correlate well with actual game performance...
• On mid-range systems (or below): Pushing RAM to get the highest possible bandwidth (and system bandwidth) in synthetic tests really does not correlate well with actual game performance...
• Intel and AMD architectures handle memory access in quite different ways - this may be an indication as to why Intel has historically had better gaming performance than AMD.
• On mid-range systems (or below): RAM speed past DDR4 3200 really doesn't matter too much in gaming applications.
• What DOES matter is the quality of the memory IC!
• Samsung B-die is well-known for its overclocking and latency-reducing ability... but even at the same stock settings as another chip show a marked improvement on both AMD and Intel systems for higher-framerate gaming. No overclocking or tightening of timings required!
• You cannot just look at static metrics like min, 1% low, average and maximum framerates to determine game performance - It doesn't show you the whole picture. 
• Nowadays, we should be looking at the smoothness of the per-frame presenation. You can do this by adding simplistic numbers like standard deviation of the frame-to-frame variance... or you can plot nice graphs of the per frametime distribution during the benchmark run treated with the natural log (in order to normalise the results from the extremes).
• The differences are pretty small... when taking everything into account. Optimising RAM timings and speed is the sort of thing people who are obsessed with an activity will do. I did enjoy seeing synthetic benchmark numbers go up until I realised that, after looking at all the data, it was all pointless anyway. You get more out of your time by buying the best memory IC at a decent speed (DDR4 3600 or 3800) and spending more money on your CPU and GPU and overclocking them than you do from optimising your lower quality RAM. 
• Of course, you probably wouldn't have known what was low or high quality RAM when you bought it! I didn't.

So, with that summary of conclusions out of the way, let's head into the final entry in this series - raytracing.