Ddd radeon: DDD And AMD Announce Collaboration To Build Out 3D Ecosystem

Investegate |DDD Group PLC Announcements

RNS Number : 8291U

DDD Group PLC

22 October 2010

DDD Group PLC

DDD and AMD announce collaboration to build out 3D ecosystem

DDD’s TriDef 2D and 3D Conversion solution to power new AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 family graphics processors

Santa Monica, California: DDD Group plc (AIM: DDD), the 3D consumer technology licensing group, today announced a collaboration with AMD (NYSE: AMD) that combines DDD’s comprehensive TriDef® stereoscopic 3D software with AMD’s next generation AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 family of graphics processors.

Through the collaboration, AMD plans to supply DDD’s TriDef software under license to PC original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and add-in-board (AiB) manufacturers as part of AMD’s integrated 3D solution. DDD will also offer discounted software downloads to customers that purchase either an AMD Radeon™ HD 5000 family or an AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 family graphics card and wish to upgrade to stereo 3D.

Since the first mass-market stereoscopic 3D notebook PC was introduced by Acer in October 2009, featuring DDD’s TriDef software and AMD Mobility Radeon™ HD graphics processor, demand for stereoscopic 3D games and movies has significantly increased.

DDD’s TriDef 3D Experience software allows more than 350 of the very latest PC games to be played in stereoscopic 3D ‘off the shelf’, even though the game has not been specifically developed for 3D. DDD’s TriDef Ignition™ 2D to 3D conversion engine is compatible with DirectX® 9, 10 and 11 games and its unique high performance stereoscopic 3D render mode enables 3D to be enjoyed on a broad range of PC products including low cost ‘entry level’ systems.

«With the AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 series graphics cards, AMD is introducing AMD HD3D technology, the result of our open 3D initiative for stereo 3D gaming and movies,» said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, GPU Division, AMD. «Through DDD, AMD HD3D technology supports more than 350 games, and AMD’s open 3D ecosystem approach encourages an incredibly broad selection of 3D solutions, available at an extremely affordable cost. «

DDD’s TriDef 3D Experience solution is already used by many leading PC OEMs including Acer, Lenovo, Fujitsu and LG Electronics in notebook and All-In-One PCs. Available in 25 international languages, it features automatic 2D to 3D game conversion, automatic 2D to 3D photo and video conversion and playback of originally made 3D movies, including the library of over 30 HD 3D movies available for download from DDD’s Yabazam! website.

Chris Yewdall, chief executive of DDD said:

«We are delighted to have been selected by AMD as a best-in-class 3D game software solution for its 3D ecosystem, which will help to accelerate the adoption of high-quality 3D solutions by OEMs and end users.»

Enquiries

DDD Group Chris Yewdall, President & CEO Victoria Stull, Chief Financial Officer	+1 310 566-3340

Brewin Dolphin Neil Baldwin / Paul Mason	0131 225 2566

College Hill Carl Franklin / Adrian Duffield	0207 457 2020

About DDD Group

DDD, also known as Dynamic Digital Depth, is transforming the viewing experience with applications for 3D displays. Its patented technologies enable: 3D viewing with and without glasses; simple integration of computer games applications with 3D displays; supply of 3D content through 2D to 3D conversion; and 3D transmission over existing networks. DDD’s shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM Market (AIM: DDD).

Technology background

A new category of flat screen LCD and plasma displays is being developed and marketed by major consumer electronics companies that provide stereoscopic 3D images both with and without the need for the viewer to wear glasses. Stereoscopic 3D images appear to have natural in and off-screen depth. 3D displays can now be found in desktop PC displays, notebook computers, and HDTVs worldwide and have also been included in mobile phones in Japan and Korea.

DDD’s solutions provide an important bridge between conventional two-dimensional (2D) software applications and content and the new 3D displays. Normal 2D pictures, video and computer graphics images are manipulated by DDD’s patented software enabling them to be displayed on 3D displays without requiring the content to be created especially for a 3D display. DDD’s solutions also enable automatic conversion of virtually any media from 2D to 3D without any pre-processing of the 2D image.

DDD licenses these software applications, marketed under the TriDef® and DDD Mobile™ brand names, to consumer electronics manufacturers for inclusion with the 3D display products supplied to their end users. DDD also licenses its software directly to end users who already own 3D displays and through an international sales channel. Some of DDD’s customers include: Samsung, Acer, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Sharp, Wistron Corporation and Arisawa Manufacturing Company.

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit www.amd.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All other brands or product names contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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AMD Talks HD3D | bit-tech.net

Presumably sidetracked by the engineering feat of wedging a Radeon GPU into a processor, AMD has rolled up fashionably late to the stereoscopic 3D shindig. Unlike its arch graphics rival, however, AMD sees no need to manufacture its own shutter glasses, it openly mocks USB emitters and it curiously relies on third-party middleware for existing games. Why is AMD adopting such a radically different strategy from Nvidia, and is it really taking 3D gaming seriously? We’re joined by AMD’s software product manager for Eyefinity, video and HD3D, Shane Parfitt, to find out.

Bit-Tech: So how does HD3D work in games?

Shane Parfitt: For 3D gaming, we have what’s known as the quad buffer in our driver, which was developed by our Direct3D engineering team and supports DirectX 9, 10 and 11. It’s kind of like an API in our driver that allows either games or middleware to tap into our driver with two streams of data at once – one frame for the left eye, and one frame for the right.

Right now a lot of what comes into the driver is dual-buffered – the dual buffer provides things like the vsync controller that you see in a lot of games. The quad buffer basically provides that times two, so it doubles up on the existing taps into the driver for games — one dual buffer for the left eye, and one for the right eye.

We then have our middleware partners DDD and iZ3D, who support a long list of games that can be converted from regular 2D to stereo 3D. Right now, we’re also offering a promotion for owners of AMD graphics cards, so if you go to DDD or iZ3D’s ordering sites and you order this middleware, the site will detect if you have an AMD graphics card and apply a 50 per cent discount. We’re going to be running that promotion for quite some time.

AMD says it’s working closely with Eidos to enable native HD3D support in Deus Ex: Human Revolution[/center]

BT: Is AMD actively working with game developers to implement HD3D natively too

SP: Yes, we’re absolutely working with developers too. We’re expecting to see native stereo 3D games later in 2011. In fact, Eidos, the developer of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, has announced that it will support native stereo 3D in the game, including our HD3D technology. That means Eidos will render images for the left eye and the right eye in the game, and tap into our quad buffer driver directly without the need for middleware.

We’re working very closely with Eidos right now on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and we have a whole team of what we call ISV alliance managers who work directly with game developers. There will be a few native 3D games coming out this year, but we expect middleware to be very important too – not all developers are going to support native stereo 3D, as it adds a lot of complexity.

BT: What’s the open stereo 3D initiative, and how does it differ from Nvidia’s strategy with 3D Vision?

SP: It’s really exactly that — an open approach to enabling stereo 3D – we want all the technologies to interoperate with each other through an industry standard. If you look at the consumer electronics industry now, its ecosystem is based on industry standards like HDMI 1.4a. If you buy a Blu-Ray 3D player from Samsung, for example, and you buy a 3DTV from Sony, you can expect them to work together properly in stereo 3D.

That’s what we’re trying to accomplish on the PC side; we want products from multiple manufacturers that can interoperate with each other through industry standards. We’re working with a number of partners to work towards that goal, and there are a few things that need to come together. As well as our middleware partners for stereo 3D gaming, we’re also working with major ISVs like Roxio to enable Blu-Ray 3D playback, and we’re working with glasses manufacturers too.

Our approach also gives display manufacturers more opportunities to differentiate and experiment with different panel technologies for shadowing, polarisation and all that kind of stuff.

Owners of compatible AMD Radeon HD cards can get 50 per cent off the price of the iZ3D and DDD middleware required for legacy games

BT:Something can only really be called a standard if everyone uses it, though. What’s your definition of an industry standard in this case?

By industry standard we mean that it’s defined by a standards body. There’s a standards body that drives the HDMI 1.4a specification, and DisplayPort has these protocols that are well documented and defined in the DisplayPort standard too. We also support HDMI 1.4a in the 5000 series through software, but the 6000 series actually has hardware support for HDMI 1.4a.

The competition does in fact support HDMI 1.4a, but we’re also supporting 3D over DisplayPort, which is defined by EISA, and I don’t think our competitor is supporting that at the moment. Samsung has already announced some monitors that will support stereo 3D over DisplayPort — the SA750 and the SA950 — so we’ll put out a driver update that supports those monitors.

1 — AMD HD3D — Using Middleware for Gaming2 — AMD HD3D — Why We’re Not Making Glasses3 — AMD HD3D — Setup and Demo

AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series Video Card Announcement: GECID.

com Presentation Details.

::>Video cards
>2010
> IT —

23-10-2010

I am glad that every year, without changing traditions, the series of AMD Radeon video accelerators is updated. Usually, each subsequent series of ATI video cards surpassed their predecessors by an order of magnitude, demonstrating a new level of performance, capabilities and quality. It can be recalled that at one time the «top» accelerators of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series were head and shoulders ahead of their predecessors ATI Radeon HD 3800. The same picture was in the case of the appearance of ATI Radeon HD 5800 video cards. The new AMD Radeon HD 6800 graphics cards must have the capabilities to at least outperform the single-chip flagship ATI Radeon HD 5870, which by today’s standards has a very high performance. Unfortunately, this year there was not a very strong breakthrough. Due to the problems associated with the transition to a thinner 32nm process technology, new graphics chips had to be produced at 40nm, like the models of the ATI Radeon HD 5000 line.

And now, October 22 has come, and we can get acquainted with the final specifications of AMD Radeon HD 6800 video cards, which became known during AMD’s presentation dedicated to a new series of graphics accelerators.

It’s worth noting right away that from now on, new Radeon video cards will be referred to as AMD Radeon, not ATI. AMD has been the owner of ATI for quite a long time, but until that moment it produced video cards with the ATI prefix, fulfilling the terms of the agreement concluded during the merger. But now we have to forget about ATI. Perhaps, in this way, AMD is trying to raise the popularity of its processors.

The new AMD Radeon HD 6800 series of graphics cards is based on a core called «Barts». The first good news is that the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics cards should cost less than their predecessors, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and ATI Radeon HD 5850, respectively. The recommended cost of the first will be in the range from $150 to $250. Immediately, drawing a parallel with video cards based on NVIDIA GPUs, we note that after the last price cut, the recommended price for the GeForce GTX 460 1 GB is $189, and the GeForce GTX 470 is $279. To all appearances, the new AMD Radeon HD 6800 video cards will have to compete with these video accelerators in the future. The new 6th series of AMD Radeon video cards will have two more older, “top-end” models AMD Radeon HD 6950 and AMD Radeon HD 6970, based on the Cayman graphics chip. The most productive video card will be the dual-chip accelerator AMD Radeon HD 6990, based on two «Antilles» GPUs. At the moment, no official information about the characteristics of «Cayman» and «Antilles» is known.

The above slide may cause some confusion for many users. It shows that the performance of the new AMD Radeon HD 6870 and AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics cards is not higher, but even slightly lower than that of the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and ATI Radeon HD 5850. A little later in the fourth quarter of 2010, more powerful AMD video accelerators should appear Radeon HD 6950 and AMD Radeon HD 6970, which will be able to support the two-chip flagship ATI Radeon HD 5970. Graphics cards based on lower-class ATI Radeon HD 5770 and ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics processors will remain «indispensable» until the end of this year. Perhaps after some time their value will decrease.

With each subsequent release of a new series of video cards, the cost of their «performance», which is expressed in GFLOPs, gradually decreased. New video accelerators usually had a higher performance and, replacing the old generation, they replaced them in the corresponding price category. Such tendencies are not surprising, they are well seen in the microprocessor segment as well. Looking ahead, the conclusion suggests itself that the AMD Radeon HD 6870 video accelerator has the best price-to-performance ratio, primarily due to the initially lower recommended cost. AMD Radeon HD 6870 Estimated Performance of 2,016 GFLOPs @ $229 MSRP.

In addition to a better performance-to-cost ratio, the Barts series should outperform the Cypress in performance per watt and performance per mm ² chip surface. These achievements are due to the optimization of the graphics chip architecture.

Barts graphics core architecture has undergone some changes compared to Cypress. Firstly, the tessellation block, which was considered the most vulnerable point of the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series, has been improved. And, secondly, the processing speed of primitives has been doubled due to the doubling of the Rasterizer blocks. These two changes can be considered the most significant in the hardware part of the graphics core. The number of SIMD blocks in the Barts graphics core has decreased compared to Cypress from 20 to 14 pieces. Each SIMD block includes 80 stream processors. Therefore, AMD Radeon HD 6800 video accelerators have a smaller number of unified pipelines in total, but operate at a slightly higher frequency, which we will discuss below.

The ability to process tessellation of the Barts graphics core compared to Cypress should theoretically double. The tessellation unit of AMD Radeon HD 6800 series video cards belongs to the seventh generation of tessellators. The older series of AMD Radeon HD 6800 video cards will have an eighth generation tessellation block.

AMD representatives note a significant increase in the number of games with support for DirectX 11. Although, it must be admitted that for the whole year a large number of very exciting 3D games did not appear. But AMD is working closely with a large number of 3D game developers in this direction. Already now you can count 15 games that have already appeared or will appear in the near future.

To display the image, the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series of video cards has five ports at once, which allows you to connect six monitors to one accelerator at once. And for the first time, ports corresponding to the new DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a specifications appeared on it.

The DisplayPort 1.2 port allows you to display an image on multiple monitors at once using a special hub, and each monitor can be set to a different resolution.

The HDMI 1. 4a port is primarily designed to support 3D stereo transmission, which is required for connection to 3D monitors.

AMD Radeon HD 6800 series graphics cards, like the previous generation, support AMD Eyefinity technology, which allows you to combine multiple monitors into a single gaming space. We wrote about this feature and its configurations earlier in the GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity x6 Edition review.

AMD believes its AMD Eyefinity technology has a number of advantages over similar technology from NVIDIA Surround competitors. First, NVIDIA Surround technology is limited to three monitors, while AMD Eyefinity allows you to connect up to six. Another significant disadvantage of NVIDIA Surround is the need to use two video cards, not one. Because of this, the number of disadvantages immediately increases, such as the total high cost, greater power consumption and heat dissipation, as well as the need to use a special motherboard to create an SLI system.

AMD could not ignore the possibility of creating 3D images. The new technology is called AMD HD3D. With the help of converter programs from DDD and iZ3D, it became possible to automatically convert content to stereo format. Thus, in stereo format, you can view photos, videos and play about four hundred games. 3D games specifically designed to reproduce 3D stereo effects should appear in 2011.

AMD Eyespeed technology is designed to offload the processor by performing video and data processing using the GPU. AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing technology using OpenCL and DirectCompute 11 standards is capable of performing various calculations, and the new UVD 3.0 module is used for hardware processing of video streams.

AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology is nothing more than a renamed ATI Stream technology.

The Barts graphics core received a new Unified Video Decoder 3 video data processing unit. The new unit received improved MPEG-4 ( DivX / XviD ) and MPEG-2 decoding capabilities, as well as the ability to decode Blu-ray 3D into multiple streams .

The performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 video accelerator is 2.0 TFLOPs, which is significantly less than the 2.72 TFLOPs of the ATI Radeon HD 5870. In other parameters, such as the number of stream processors, the single-chip flagship of the previous series also outperforms the new solution.

AMD Radeon HD 6870 «reference» graphics card is equipped with two auxiliary power connectors. But the maximum power consumption level is not very high — only 151 watts. Idle power consumption is slightly lower than that of the ATI Radeon HD 5800. The cooling system uses a turbine-type cooler that cools the graphics processor and memory chips.

Manufacturers often make very interesting comparisons in which they try to show their product in a better light. It seems to us that comparing the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 graphics card with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1 GB cannot be called correct. First of all, because their recommended cost is significantly different — $239 versus $189, respectively. It would be much more interesting to evaluate the capabilities of the new and previous generation of Radeon among themselves. And so, the superiority of AMD Radeon HD 6870 over NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1 GB averages 25%, which, in fact, corresponds to the difference in their cost.

The AMD Radeon HD 6850 video card turned out to be, relatively speaking, 25% «weaker» than the AMD Radeon HD 6870. Its power consumption in maximum load mode is only 127 W, so the engineers managed to install only one 6- contact power connector. The number of ports on the interface panel is exactly the same as that of AMD Radeon HD 6870. 30% superiority.

Also, the manufacturer was not too lazy to present the test results in a multi-display configuration consisting of three monitors. Testing was carried out at a resolution of 5760 x 1080. Judging by the indicators, the frame rate is more than playable. So advanced gamers may well try to get by with installing just one AMD Radeon HD 6870 video card. 8

AMD Radeon HD 6870

AMD Radeon HD 6850

ATI Radeon HD 5870

ATI Radeon HD 5850

ATI Radeon HD 4870

Codename

Barts XT

Barts

Cypress

RV770

Number of transistors

1.7 billion

2.15 billion

0.956 billion

Number of stream processors

1120

960

1600

1440

800

Performance, TFLOPs

2. 0

1.5

2.72

2.09

1.2

Texture blocks

Texture filtering, GTexels/s

50.4

37.2

52.2

Number of ROPs

Pixel filtering, GPixels/s

28.8

24.8

27.2

23.2

Z/Stencil, GSamples/s

115. 2

99.2

108.8

92.8

Core frequency, MHz

900

775

850

725

750

Memory frequency, GHz

1.05 (4.2 GHz effective) GDDR5

1.0 (4.0 GHz effective) GDDR5

1.2 (4.8 GHz effective) GDDR5

1.0 (4.0 GHz effective) GDDR5

900 MHz (3.6 GHz effective) GDDR5

Memory bus width

256 bit

256 bit

Memory bandwidth, GB/s

134. 4

128

153.5

128

115.2

Frame buffer

1GB

1GB

1 GB

FP64

N/A

1/5

N/A

Process

TSMC 40 nm

TSMC 40 nm

TSMC 55 nm

Maximum / minimum power consumption, W

151/19

127/19

188/27

151/27

160/90

Recommended price

$239

$179

~$349

~$229

N/A

Video accelerators on AMD Radeon HD 6870 and ATI Radeon HD 5850 are similar in many respects. Similar parameters include computational performance, texture filtering speed, and even maximum power consumption along with cost. Comparing these technical characteristics and the cost of video cards of the new and previous generation, the conclusion suggests itself that AMD decided to slightly lower the class of the new series of video cards with an index of 8. In this light, the release a little later of the older AMD Radeon HD 69 video accelerators00 looks quite logical.

As a result

I would like to argue a little with AMD marketers who announced AMD Radeon HD 6800 video cards under the motto: “Today, the best just got better”, which can be translated as “Now the best has become even better «. AMD Radeon HD 6800 video cards have become a bit more technologically advanced and theoretically have improved tessellation capabilities, which can only appear in games with DirectX 11 support. The Radeon HD 6800 is even slightly inferior to the previous AMD Radeon HD 5800 series. So we can only look forward to the flagships.

However, from the point of view of perspective and balance, the video cards of the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series definitely look more advanced. Perhaps, in the near future, good 3D games with DirectX 11 support will appear, and new video cards will be in full demand.

Author: Dmitry Masyuk

10 570
views

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, AMD’s sub-flagship RDNA 2 architecture gaming graphics card, came to our test. We tested it in several important scenarios and compared it with the less expensive (and relatively easily available in stores) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 .

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

specifications

72 RDNA 2 compute units

Frequency up to 2250 MHz

Power consumption 300 W, two standard 8-pin connectors

16 GB GDDR6 16 GHz

2x DisplayPort 1. 4a, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB-C (DislayPort 1.4a)

The case is made of rigid aluminum plates with plastic inserts, the Radeon logo is highlighted during operation. The Widercard is weighty, but not too heavy — it does not require props or additional holders, like some three-cooler models from partner manufacturers.

In 2020, AMD finally abandoned the turbine cooling system, so the RX 6800 XT is very quiet. We did not conduct detailed temperature tests, but according to Afterburner monitoring during gaming tests, the video card did not heat up above 72 degrees Celsius (in an open case).

The rear panel has a full set of connectors for connecting to any modern display. For computer monitors, DisplayPort is best, as it has a bandwidth of 32.4 Gbps and can handle video streams up to 4K resolution at 120 fps with 10-bit (and even 12-bit) color.

The

USB-C used to be labeled as a VR headset connector, although some modern monitors can also be connected to it. But this is not Thunderbolt 4 and not USB 4.0, so the voltage on it is low, and it will not work to power the monitor from it.

We performed all tests on a system with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor and using components from ASUS provided by the company as a test bench.

Test stand:

Motherboard ASUS ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING

Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

RAM 16 GB DDR4-3200 HyperX Fury

SSD WD Black SN850 2TB

CBO CPU: ASUS TUF GAMING LC 240 RGB

Case ASUS TUF Gaming GT501

ASUS ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING motherboard is fully compatible with Ryzen 5000 processors and allowed to test the video card in Smart Access Memory mode. It also features Wi-Fi 6, supports NVMe SSDs with PCIe 4.0 interface, and has a numeric post-code indicator in case the system refuses to start after overclocking or replacing components.

The GT501 case turned out to be huge, and it was not possible to place it comfortably on my desk (and even under the desk), since I usually use a Micro-ITX system unit. But it turned out to be very comfortable to assemble the system in it — the cable routing system was thought out, there was plenty of space for wires, drives and a CBO radiator, and the fabric handles on top were really useful for dragging the computer from place to place (if desired, they can be unhooked).

I also used a 24-thread Ryzen 9 processor for tests5900X and WD Black SN 850 SSD with PCIe 4.0 interface and read speeds up to 7 GB / s — top-end components allow you to test the video card in the best possible conditions and exclude other components from affecting the test results.

I usually test graphics cards with my Ryzen 5 2600, but it doesn’t support Resizable BAR (the universal technology on which Smart Access Memory is based), and in games like Assassin’s Creed it already doesn’t perform well.

The graphs below show the difference between identical systems running RTX 3070 but with different processors. Since all games load hardware a little differently, the effect of replacing the processor is different — traditionally, CS:GO wins the most, but the increase in frequencies and the number of cores affects ray-traced games no less significantly.

The benchmarks shown in this article represent the best possible performance picture, and the results of the same video cards on other systems may differ significantly.

Play tests

We’ve tested the Radeon RX 6800 XT in a variety of modern games, including games supported by AMD (including with a focus on new consoles) and games actively supported by NVIDIA.

Games in 1440r

In most modern games, the RX 6800 XT’s performance is a bit overkill for 1440p resolution without ray tracing — fast shooters like Doom Eternal and Borderlands 3 consistently maintain frame rates above 100 fps at the highest possible settings.

Games like AC: Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion and Control that target 30 or 60 fps get over 80 fps, which can lead to unwanted artifacts like tearing on monitors running at 144Hz or without Free Sync.

Games in 4K

In 4K the picture is different. In traditional rasterized games like Doom, Assassin’s Creed and Borderlands 3, frame rates are more than satisfactory, but titles that rely heavily on DLSS 2.0 for optimization fall short. Cyberpunk 2077 only runs at 30 fps, while Control and WD: Legion are running at 40-50 fps, and that’s without ray tracing.

We’ve included NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 FE results for comparison — where possible, we’ve enabled DLSS 2.0, as there’s basically no reason for users not to do it at home. In some cases, upscaling from 1080p (but NVIDIA technology allows upscaling from 1440p and even 720p) significantly increased the frame rate without any visible image damage. And this despite the fact that the RTX 3070 is one and a half to two times inferior to the RX 6800 XT in terms of «clean» performance, according to the results in games without DLSS.

Ray tracing

AMD’s ray tracing is also not so good. To begin with, in Cyberpunk 2077, tracing on Radeon cannot be enabled at all, support for AMD video cards will most likely appear no earlier than an update for next-generation consoles is released.

The cheaper RTX 3070 outperforms the RX 6800 XT in tracing games not only with DLSS enabled, but even without it — separate 2nd generation RT cores definitely do their job better than the tracing cores built into RDNA 2 chips. However , it is possible that part of the blame lies with optimization — all existing games with RTX were created, albeit using standard APIs, but with the participation of NVIDIA.

AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM)

AMD does not yet have its own analogue of DLSS — the dynamic resolution system with the Fidelity FX sharpening filter allows you to win some fps, but it is implemented in a small number of games and does not look very good in dynamics.

At the same time, AMD promotes SAM technology based on Resizable BAR — thanks to it, the processor can freely access the fast RAM of the video card, which speeds up the rendering process. The company claims that this is essentially a «free» performance improvement, and it is, our tests showed fps gains of between 4 and 9.,5%.

AMD for some reason limited SAM to compatibility with late 2020 hardware — the function only works on Radeon RX 6000 video cards in conjunction with Ryzen 5000 processors. At the same time, it must be enabled through the BIOS, and when the OS is running, there is no indication of whether it works or not, not even provided in the proprietary Radeon utility.

Since the Resizable BAR technology has existed for many years (but for some reason no one used it for games), NVIDIA added its support to the driver for GeForce RTX video cards, and it claims compatibility with both AMD and Intel (but test the effectiveness so far no one has had the opportunity to do so).

Benchmarks

Synthetic performance tests show the difference in purpose and scope of NVIDIA and AMD video cards.

3DMark’s simulating gaming benchmark favors the apparently more powerful RX 6800 XT, but while the RTX 3070 is 21% behind in the DirectX 12 (Time Spy) rasterization test, the gap is reduced to 9% in the ray tracing test due to more efficient cores NVIDIA for hardware tracing.

In professional tasks, NVIDIA is a clear leader — at least in creative tasks like 3D rendering. Blender (like most popular creative programs, including the Adobe package) is adapted to work with Cuda cores and supports engines and codecs developed for them, such as OptiX (rendering) and NVENC (video encoding).

Tests by other publications show that in architectural and engineering design (CAD) programs, a large amount of Radeon video memory allows video cards to show high results and sometimes even makes them more preferable, but this purely professional scenario should be considered separately.