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Fable Legends DX12 Benchmark Stressing High End GPUs

Posted by timothy on from the tough-life-for-those-gpus dept.

Vigile writes: In preparation for the release of the free-to-play Fable Legends game on both Xbox One and PC this winter, Microsoft and Lionhead Studios released a benchmark today that allows users to test performance of their PC hardware configuration with a DirectX 12 based game engine that pushes the boundaries of render quality. Based on a modified UE4 engine, Fable Legends includes support for asynchronous compute shaders, manual resource barrier tracking and explicit memory management, all new to the DX12 API. Unlike the previous DX12 benchmark, Ashes of the Singularity, which focused mainly on high draw call counts and mass quantities of on-screen units, Fable Legends takes a more standard approach, attempting to improve image quality and shadow reproduction with the new API. PC Perspective has done some performance analysis with the new benchmark and a range of graphics cards, finding that while NVIDIA still holds the lead at the top spot (GTX 980 Ti vs Fury X), the AMD Radeon mid-range products offer better performance (and better value) than the comparable GeForce parts.

51 comments

  1. UE4 engine... by wardrich86 · · Score: 0

    The Unreal Engine 4 Engine, eh?

    1. Re:UE4 engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They probably mean the Unreal Engine 4 branch you can get on GitHub. There's another game out there in Early Access, ARK: Survival Evolved, that's currently melting GPUs everywhere with this engine as well. When the "medium" setting says you should be using a GTX 770, you know you're in for it.

    2. Re:UE4 engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and the funny thing is the game still looks like ass, even with a GTX 970

    3. Re:UE4 engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He was talking about UE4 Engine (Unreal Engine 4 Engine) versus just using UE4 (Unreal Engine 4).

      Like saying Car Hybrid Car.

    4. Re:UE4 engine... by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 1

      With a Geforce 980 Ti, I get wildly variant 30-60fps in ARK. Conversely, Unreal Tournament 4 gives me a flat 144fps. Both at max settings. I feel like ARK is probably just horribly unoptimized with all the custom effects they've added in.

    5. Re:UE4 engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ARK has made *enormous* strides in optimization since their initial launch, when the game stuttered like a last-gen console on low settings with a GTX 970 / i7-4790k combo.

      It plays quite smoothly on high/max settings now with the above-mentioned combo.

    6. Re:UE4 engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know it's unpopular to mention around dedicated FOSS advocates, but the hard part about a rendering engine is not in implementing the fancy details, it's in optimizing the behavior so that user experiences are consistent and tolerable. Most devs don't like optimization work (especially when all the other devs are actively changing details every hour with no regard to your efforts), so the ones who do like optimization are usually already pretty busy getting paid to do it.

    7. Re:UE4 engine... by GiMP · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure Unreal Tournament 4 is a good comparison to anything. It's stupidly fast. It may easily have the most beautiful graphics of any game I've ever played, yet plays effortlessly >60fps at 4k with a R9 390 with ultra settings. Keep in mind, too, how fast the action in this game is.

      Games like Battlefield 4 and Tomb Raider on the other hand, play at 60+ fps only with slightly tweaked settings and still have occasional frame drops during moments of high action. They're really not any prettier. The Batman games do well with FPS but still stutter for reasons unknown, but seemingly related to CPU (PhysX? Texture loading?). Point is, UT4 might be in a class of its own.

      By the way, one other thing I've noticed is that older games do not necessarily run much faster with beefy hardware. This surprised me. Some such as Doom3 scale well with the newer hardware, whereas games like ROTT 2013 and Serious Sam 3 don't, having worse graphics and performance than newer titles.

    8. Re:UE4 engine... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Also, get off the official servers. Private servers play like a completely different game.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    9. Re:UE4 engine... by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Yeah, but it's the greatest looking ass of all time, an ass that will redefine how videogames are made, an ass like no other ass ever made," said Peter Molyneux.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    10. Re:UE4 engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ARK runs fine on my Super NES CDROM.

    11. Re: UE4 engine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think you really get the post you replied to. He was saying even if the engine is optimized and runs well poorly made props will destroy that performance. Take the shitty old Realspace 2 engine for instance. It goes over 1200 FPS on my computer, but when new models were added with way too many shaders on them(to look shiny and cool) it drags me down to 15 FPS. That was an oversight not with the engine, but with custom game resources.

  2. what about low end cards? by sirber · · Score: 1

    wasn't DX12 supposed to help them?

    --
    Be or ben't
    1. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As far as I could tell, DX12 gave a massive improvement FPS wise on low end CPUs. Then again, that was with the AOTS benchmark which is RTS based.

    2. Re:what about low end cards? by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 1

      DX12 was more about helping low-end CPUs, or let higher-end CPUs push more geometry. It doesn't do much to help GPUs.

    3. Re:what about low end cards? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      It does increase efficiency for certain types of common work a lot. Doing more work in the same amount of time is the same as doing the same amount of work in less time, with oblivious scaling limitations for different bottlenecks.

    4. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As far as I could tell, only AMD video cards benefit from DX12. Nvidia cards are FASTER under DX11. It's no wonder they just so happen to not have a DX11 build, which they could easily do since they are using UE4, but just "havent".

    5. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They help amd's cards because their dx9/11 drivers are shit and have been for years. DX12 and vulkan just move a lot of the optimization process to the developer.

    6. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      DX12 is all hype. It doesn't improve performance except in Microsoft's rigged numbers.

      I'll wait for Vulkan, which actually does have better performance than its predecessor. All of the big engines already support it so game developers will get high performance and cross platform for free.

    7. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They help amd's cards because their dx9/11 drivers are shit and have been for years. DX12 and vulkan just move a lot of the optimization process to the developer.

      Wrong. I'm not going to bother with the details since they've already been widely discussed (here's a link to an Ars article for example: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/08/directx-12-tested-an-early-win-for-amd-and-disappointment-for-nvidia/)

      The short version is that nVidia's hardware is more oriented around a serial pipeline, since they designed them to work with DX11 specifically, and DX11 is a more serial-oriented pipeline. AMD, however, has hardware much better suited to parallel pipeline, which DX12 actually takes advantage of. The end result is a modest increase for nVidia, and a huge increase for AMD hardware.

    8. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nvidia hardware runs up to 90% faster with Vulkan than with OpenGL, so I don't think what you say is true.

      DX12 was a performance decrease from DX11 on Nvidia hardware, but AMD's was better. This not only means that DX12 is bullshit, but AMDs drivers were crap and that they only just recently got them up to speed.

    9. Re:what about low end cards? by Ayanami_R · · Score: 1

      Nothing is 100% compatible yet, wait, then decide. DX12 is up and running, Vulkan is barely a page right now.

      --
      "Science is the power of man"
    10. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nvidia hardware runs up to 90% faster with Vulkan than with OpenGL, so I don't think what you say is true.

      DX12 was a performance decrease from DX11 on Nvidia hardware, but AMD's was better. This not only means that DX12 is bullshit, but AMDs drivers were crap too and they only just got them up to speed recently.

    11. Re:what about low end cards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't do much to help GPUs.

      It does if you implemented Asynchronous Compute in your GPUs (which AMD apparently has going back to their Graphics Core Next 1.0 processors).

  3. No DX11 - DX12 comparisons this time by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 3, Informative

    Last time DX12 benchmarks were posted, NVIDIA flipped their lid --- DX12 seemed to only hurt their performance, while it gave AMD an easy 25-50% boost and let them catch up to NVIDIA's DX11 numbers. This time, no such comparison. I wonder why.

    1. Re:No DX11 - DX12 comparisons this time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm sure nvidia will give companies a helping hand in "optimizing" their games for both AMD and Nvidia user.

    2. Re:No DX11 - DX12 comparisons this time by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't conclude that as the cause. Changes in performance are very dependent on game design. Just because AMD got a boost in one game doesn't mean NVIDIA won't get a boost in another.

    3. Re:No DX11 - DX12 comparisons this time by heson · · Score: 1

      Yes, but now it is rewritten to be slower on dx11.

    4. Re:No DX11 - DX12 comparisons this time by Shados · · Score: 1

      This time its a bit special, and kind of similar (just a little) to the days of the 9000 series, where an implementation decision completely fucked them over once the next version of directx came out.

      The async compute shaders don't quite work as expected on their current cards. I didn't keep up so my info could be up to date, but they were going to partially fix it in software.

      I dunno if it happened or will happen and how effective it will be. But any game implementing async shaders in DX12 would tilt things in AMD's favor to some extent.

  4. And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again .. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This forced artificial obsolescence of DirectX12 not being available for Windows 7 (or 8, 8.1) is complete bullshit.

    I'm not downgrading to the privacy fuckfest of Windows 10 just to run a benchmark.

  5. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 5, Informative

    You realize all the privacy-rapist features of Win10 have been added to 7/8, right?

  6. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by ExekielS · · Score: 2, Informative

    you still have the option to uninstall those updates and choose updates manually in windows 7/8. Something you can't do in windows 10. So no.

    --
    ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
  7. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    Well how? Screen every update to make sure MS don't sneak it in? What people are doing is disabling windows update. That makes Windows 7 not better than XP in terms of obsolescence and security. And really how much can you uninstall? People are finding the Windows 10 install files downloaded despite having ticked no to the Windows 10 offer and having uninstalled the tool.

    It has become clear that you are NOT in control of your computer. That privilege is given to either Microsoft or malware authors depending on your OS settings.

  8. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No they weren't. I think what you meant to say is that you were stupid and installed them into your Windows 7/8 machines.

    Those of us who know better won't ever worry about that because with have always had auto update disabled.

  9. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well how? Screen every update to make sure MS don't sneak it in?

    I've been doing that for years now, for everything except security updates.

  10. Piece of cake to remove them... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    TO REMOVE THE BOGUS OPTIONAL TELEMETRY HOTFIXES MANUALLY:

    Open command prompt
    Type powershell
    issue these commands

    ---

    TO SEE WHAT ONES ARE INSTALLED:

    get-hotfix -id KB3035583, KB2952664,KB2976978,KB3021917,KB3044374,KB2990214

    ---

    TO UNINSTALL THEM (these for sure, per url next below):

    wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583
    wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664
    wusa /uninstall /kb:2976978
    wusa /uninstall /kb:3021917
    wusa /uninstall /kb:3044374
    wusa /uninstall /kb:2990214

    per http://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/...

    ---

    DESCRIPTIONS OF EACH (these uninstalled properly):

    KB3068708 (Telemetry)
    KB3075249 (Telemetry)
    KB3080149 (Telemetry)

    KB3022345 (Telemetry)
    KB2977759 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)
    KB3021917 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparatioon + Telemetry)
    KB3035583 (Windows 10 upgrade preparation)

    ---

    I GOT "NOT INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER" ON THESE INITIALLY SINCE I HAD IE11 installed (PROBABLY ONES FOR IE9/10/11 &/or Windows 10 (I use Win7 here)):

    KB3075249
    KB3080149
    KB2505438
    * KB2670838 (See IE 9/10/11 notes below)
    KB3044374
    KB2990214 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)
    KB2505438 (Although it claims to fix performance issues, it often breaks fonts)
    KB2976978 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)

    ---

    I GOT "NOT INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER" ON THESE (*PRIOR* TO PULLING KB2670838):

    * KB2670838 (This update often breaks AERO on Windows 7 and makes some fonts on websites fuzzy. A Windows 7 specific update only
                            (do not install IE10 or 11 otherwise it will be bundled with them, IE9 is the max version you should install to avoid this).

    THESE RE-APPEAR AFTER UNINSTALLING IE11 RIGHT ON RESTARTING & CHECKING WINDOWS UPDATE:

    * KB2952664 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
    * KB3021917 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
    * KB3068708 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
    * KB3092627 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)

    ---

    run cmd as administrator

    sc stop Diagtrack
    sc delete Diagtrack

    ---

    *Task Scheduler Library:

    Everything under "Application Experience"
    Everything under "Autochk"
    Everything under "Customer Experience Improvement Program"
    Under "Disk Diagnostic" only the "Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector"
    Under "Maintenance" "WinSAT"
    "Media Center" and click the "status" column, then select all non-disabled entries and disable them.

    *services.msc:

    "Remote Registry" to "Disabled" instead of "Manual".

    ---

    IMPORTANT ONE IS GROUP POLICY (gpedit.msc):

    Go to Control Panel, Administrative Templates, System
    Internet Communication Management, Internet Communication Settings

    ENABLE (to turn it on, it is a disabler)

    "Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program"

    (IF YOU HAVE Windows "home" (less than Pro models), export the section of the registry involved from a Pro system & merge the .reg file you exported - should work well enough to do the job here for those of you using that lesser model of Windows)

    APK

    P.S.=> See subject: That'll do the job to get rid of it, & it works... apk

  11. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by nnull · · Score: 1

    I don't really care, I just block everything in my firewall now ever since all the android hacks. And now with this Microsoft crap, I'm all ready for it. If it's doing something I didn't approve of, it's not going through.

  12. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    Well how? Screen every update to make sure MS don't sneak it in?

    Actually, the readmes for the "updates" say right on the tin what they do. You do have to tunnel down to their site to actually read the readmes, because the descriptions in windows update are bullshit, but at least it's possible without decompiling things. So yeah, this is what you have to do now. It's sad. Pathetic, I think. But it's where we are.

    Windows 7 appears to be my really for real last version of Windows... I've said it before, but I decided Windows 7 was no more odious than XP. 8, ugh. 8.1, meh. 9, hahaha. 10, nope! So uh... unless they turn Windows 10 into Windows 180 ala the Xbox One [Eighty] I guess this is where the road ends.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Have you ever heard of the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well my Windows 7 and 8.1 machines all work perfectly fine as they currently are. No instability, no performance issues.

    I used to do manual updates from time to time, but with MS trying to sneak crap in, I've simply opted to never do updates again. My firewalls and AV can handle security.

  14. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

    Which is why EVERY updated is blocked until I personally verify exactly what it is doing.

    If Microsoft wants to data mine my machine they can go fuck themselves.

  15. DX12 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck them with that DX12, recompile to DX11 and we will talk.

  16. I'd be excited except for what they did to Fable 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Fable 3 was tied to Games For Windows Live... even on Steam. GFWL is now dead. The game will no longer launch and even if I could get it to launch, as far as I know, all my DLC is gone since that had to come through GFWL even though I bought it on Steam.

    I will not purchase another lionhead studios game... and will suspect any game that requires tie ins to any Microsoft gaming service in the future.

  17. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by edxwelch · · Score: 1

    Luckly enough, it's not going to be a one-sided win for DirectX this time. Vulkan supports all versions of Windows from XP onwards and for that reason there's a lot of game studios going to use Vulkan instead of DirectX 12.
    Blizzard and EA and a few others are even Khronos members.

  18. Fable Legends: Myth Lore Allegory Saga by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The redundancy in the title makes me feel like an idiot every time I say it. It sounds like those people that say "ATM machine". And could the title be any more generic and bland? I hope the marketing committee that was hired to come up with this managed to walk away with a large sum of Microsoft's money.

  19. Download link by war4peace · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ok, I'm stupid.
    Now that we got this out of the way...
    Where the hell can I get a download link?
    TFS doesn't have it.
    TFA doesn't have it.
    A quick search online found... nothing. Only benchmark results. Clearly I am missing something.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  20. Re: And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users agai by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thank you for stating this. It is bullshit and it needed to be said.

  21. Windows 10 is more or less fine by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    but you will be giving up the last of your XP compatibility (my bros a strat gamer and he bemoans it's lack of Space Empires 4 compatibility )

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  22. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Fucking hell people, don't any of you have content-filtering proxy servers and/or hardware firewalls in your networks?

  23. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, the readmes for the "updates" say right on the tin what they do.

     
    Unless Microsoft doesn't want you to know everything the updates do. If you're running Windows at all you have already decided to trust Microsoft.

  24. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Unless Microsoft doesn't want you to know everything the updates do. If you're running Windows at all you have already decided to trust Microsoft.

    Fraud is a Felony. Microsoft might not tell you what an update does, but they're not going to lie to you about it. Too many people are waiting for a slip-up like that, and by people, I mean corporations who can actually afford a lawsuit.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  25. Re:And M$ again shafts Windows 7 and 8 users again by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    Crap comes in through HTTP unharmed anyway. Malware is happy to run with "only" user execution context, because it can run arbitrary code and has access to all your data, even that network mounted rw share.
    I suppose there will eventually be some update blocker software, or run some tool like Autopatcher with a blacklist or whitelist if that's possible? or some WSUS or similar server (that only costs like $1000 lol, unless warez Server 2008 R2 just works)