New AMD Catalyst Driver 14.1 (inc. MANTLE) - massive rF2 performance increase!!!

*Preamble: I have tried not to get too over excited, and overstate the performance jump - so as not to annoy people (nVidia fanbois etc) - but it is hard not to be excited - especially for others with cheaper HD7000 series cards (HD7750-HD7850 etc) - considering how woefully rF2 has been performing on these cards (comparatively speaking).

OK - so without too many expectations, I joined the F3 fanatics server (Lienz) and took a benchmark FPS for my settings (with whatever the last beta was), before upgrading to the new AMD drivers. Only one other rF2 driver was around. Upon car ignition, the FPS was stable at 100fps consistently, as long as I did nothing. By pit exit, the fps dropped to 96fps. A very solid and consistent fps, on roughly "medium" settings.

I then logged back in after downloading and installing: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.asp

Doing nothing, the FPS had jumped to 168FPS!!!!!! By pit exit, the fps dropped to 156fps!! I then restarted rF2 with all settings as high as possible (something I couldn't achieve earlier while maintaining a minimum of 65fps). All fps between 85 and 130fps!!

I am completely gobsmacked. I really need some confirmation on this! On the surface it appears to be a massive 60+% increase for my system/settings. I also noted GPU memory usage had dropped around 25+%.

It seems that maybe the comments claiming that the update won't be relevant to rF2, were incorrect.

Potential reasons for perceived performance increase:

1) AMD claims that Mantle can generate up to 9 times more draw calls per second than comparable APIs by reducing CPU overhead.
2) New rendering techniques possible.
3) Direct GPU memory access.
4) Multithreaded parallel CPU rendering support for at least 8 cores.

What I am really surprised about, is that it has resulted in a performance increase without specific game developer optimisation. I am working on the assumption that ISI have not included special code for Mantle yet.

i7-4820K
16Gb RAM (4X4Gb)
HD7970 + HD7950 (crossfire has NEVER worked in rF2).
128Gb RAID0 rF2 drive
27" 16:10 1920X1200

 

So when did you change your mind on that one?

nVidia user here, but I hope your early results are sustained and help other AMD users - especially those with the seemingly heaviest performance drop relative to their card performance vs nVidia in other games. Be interesting to see what results a wide range of systems get too, and what 'type' of system is benefited most. But more than anything else I hope you didn't somehow forget to adjust your settings to the same as before and this is a false increase.

 

I admit to being slightly incredulous - but I am not really one for false excitement. After more testing I am certain that these results are real and sustained.

 

part of notes 14.1

DX9 Dual graphics is not supported in AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta. An upcoming release will enable support

 

Hmm I wonder - is DX9 dual graphics supposed to enable crossfire in rF2.....? (pray)

EDIT: Any further hints on the exceptional performance increase?...I should look myself I guess....

 

Yeah you wouldn't! Despite the DX9 grunt of the 6990, it wont support mantle. The 780Ti is a beast. But Mantle really does seem to be something else...makes the HD7970's seem a LOT more attractive...

 

Sapphire 7950 boost
RF2 i am seeing 15% more fps and more stable
All settings high,4 AA, 16x
I can drive the Civic with 15 on the grid an stable 80 fps, before had 40

 

XFX Radeon HD 7970 XT2 GHz Edition, noticed a obvious fps increase, Civic on Lime Rock Park runs around +20 fps faster now, best Ati drivers so far.

 

HD7850 overclocked, no difference in Heaven Benchmark and slight loss in RF2 benchmark

 

How do you benchmark RF2?

 

Just create a replay (mid pack start)
Get FRAPS
Run that then run the Replay remembering to have the exact same settings (in game and CCC/nVidea)
FRAPS saves a file with FPS average/low/high etc and compare


Edit: bearing in mind it's not an exact Benchmark as I've noticed some dust particles dont always show up and next time they do, but you get a decent enough comparison.

 

no gain in fps.... when I move my mouse on track in dev mode game will freeze until I stop moving it lol

 

No gain. I suspect that the settings was not the same from the two versions if you are getting any gain.
Or the old old ccc was perhaps having issues (no clean installation can cause issues)

 

Mantle only gives improvements if the game is especially coded to use it. And considering ISI has never mentioned redoing the engine to support it, I wouldn't count on it.

Sounds like your old driver was just terrible and this one finally fixed it and allowed your GPU to function as it should. Or maybe it's something else (like a setting getting turned way down somewhere.)

 

No noticeable improvements on a single HD7950. Weirdly windows now detects my GPU as a R9 200 series.... the little fibber.

 

The AMD elves snuck in and gave you an upgrade

 

Well, the drivers itself can improve performance in game, mantle or not. Maybe thats why people have gains.

 

It seems that I gained some more fps, but the thing that I hate about rf2 is the instability ' of the performance!
It goes from 85fps(triple screen and high-medium graphic setting) to 48 then up again to 70 then 55 then 87........

 

Hehe yes, I think there were two of them. One with a message for Windows and the other one carrying the card. Unfortunately the one carrying the card tripped and fell through the fan on the top of my pc case... poor thing. R.I.P.

 

The only way to make sure that your performance has increase is with that method used in this thread

http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/16951-R9-290-or-GTX-770-4GB

Make sure you have all settings exactly the same settings as described in images that are inside *-.rar file and I'll update the graph created on that thread. Test with the old driver and the new one.

Mantle won't increase that much even if its implemented in RF2 engine and specially in "old" cards...

Just like Jonh i changed to Nvidia only because RF2 and I'm soooooooooo happyyyyyyyyyy...