Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Praised for its efficiency (performance per watt) and recommended by admin89 and other members of this forum, the Radeon HD7750 GDDR5 (@ 72GB/s) card should be a decent upgrade from those 'el cheapo' low-end cards (with GDDR3 @ 28 GB/s) with more than enough pixel throughput, memory bandwidth and shader processing power to run almost any title at 4xIR with VSync.

So after getting one of these cards for testing, the first thing I did was a quick Dolphin benchmark to compare the performance of the new card to an old, dirt cheap, HTPC grade card (the HD5570 GDDR3 @ 28 GB/s).

Both cards were tested on the same PC with the latest version of Dolphin (exact same settings) and the latest official drivers from AMD.

But here's the shocker: The performance results of the new card were surprisingly bad - the opposite of what's expected from a card with such specs.

How is it possible that a low-end HD5570 from two generations ago with fewer (and less powerful) processing cores, with only 1/3 of the memory bandwidth and 2.5x lower pixel fillrate runs circles around this new card when using the D3D11 renderer ?

The modern and much more powerful 7750 performs so bad (with the D3D11 renderer) that it's unable to render an undemanding scene like the DKCR 'Start Game' screen (the one with the stone ape statues) at 60fps (56fps) @ 1x IR (!) with VSync turned off.
Enabling Dolphin's frame limiter cripples the performance even more, while there's almost no effect on the old card.
Increasing the IR to 4x drops the framerate even further.

It was really shocking to see the 'crappy' old 5570 running this screen at a blazing fast 89 fps at 1xIR and still managing to pump out 65 fps at 4xIR.

There's no such problem with the D3D9 backend (or even the slow-ass OpenGL backend). You can crank up the IR to 4x and still get rock-solid 60fps with VSync + frame limiter enabled (the speed is back to normal: 89fps @ 1xIR).

But D3D11 should perform a whole lot better with these modern cards (significantly faster than D3D9), since they're designed / optimized for D3D11.
HD7750 should be able to handle 4xIR + VSync (D3D11) with ease.

Note: With the old, low-end 5570, D3D11 was performing noticeably faster.


Here are some other (even more shocking) benchmark results :

=====================================================
Dolphin D3D11 BENCH PART I - HD7750 vs. HD5570 (+ some HD6850 results)
=====================================================

MoM @ 4xIR (D3D11), save state of a more demanding (GPU-heavy) scene
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
HD5570 GDDR3 = 52 fps (same as the HD6850)
HD7750 GDDR5 = 43 fps (!)

SMG1 Observatory @ 2xIR (D3D11):
----------------------------------------------
HD5570 GDDR3 = 47 fps (same as the HD6850)
HD7750 GDDR5 = 42 fps (!)

DKCR 'Start Game' Screen @ 4xIR (D3D11) + VSync:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
HD5570 GDDR3 = 60 fps (same as the HD6850) --> http://postimage.org/image/54iqnp4v5/full/
HD7750 GDDR5 = 41 fps (!), even at 1xIR --> http://postimage.org/image/ruhljxim9/full/


======================================================
DOLPHIN BENCH PART II - D3D9 vs. D3D11 performance on the new HD7750
======================================================

MKWii Menu (Single player) @ 4xIR - really demanding part, needs *a lot* of GPU 'juice'
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D3D9 = 68 fps
D3D11 = 21 fps (!)

FZERO Machine Select Screen @ 4xIR
-----------------------------------------------
D3D9 = 31 fps
D3D11 = 6 fps (!)

SMS (with EFB to RAM) @ 4xIR
----------------------------------------
D3D9 = 31 fps
D3D11 = 17 fps

DKJB Banana Kingdom (end of level banana bunch) @ 4xIR
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
D3D9 = 71 fps (same as the HD6850)
D3D11 = 50 fps (HD6850 = 68 fps)


Is this an issue with all cards in the HD7000 series ?


Is there anyone with a HD7000 series card who could test and compare the difference in performance between the D3D9 and D3D11 backends ?


Emu: Dolphin GIT 3.0-631 (latest revision)
OS: Win7 SP1 x64
Latest GPU drivers: Catalyst 12.4 WHQL (8.96.1) and 12.5 beta (8.97)

Both PC's the cards were testing in have the same CPU?
Both drivers the same?
Dolphin settings the same?
Dolphin revision the same?

There are many things that could be at fault and only you know how well and accurate you tested.

(04-23-2012, 02:19 AM)Starscream Wrote: [ -> ]Both PC's the cards were testing in have the same CPU?
Both drivers the same?
Dolphin settings the same?
Dolphin revision the same?

Same PC, CPU, PCI-E slot, OS, drivers, Dolphin build and settings. Just swapped the card(s) to do some benchmarks.

5 different drivers tested: 12.3 WHQL (8.95.1), 7000 series beta driver (8.95.5), 12.4 OpenCL BETA (8.96), 12.5 beta (8.97) and 12.4 WHQL (8.96.1).

Clean install with multiple reboots, uninstall via the ATI Install Manager, custom batch script to clean the driver leftovers (files and registry entries) and a final pass with CCleaner.

Maybe bad drivers ? Lots of people have other issues with the 7970

Maybe the drivers are not that optimized for the newest AMD-Series, as for the HD5xxx Series?
I currently read even people from nVidia have problems with current games (BF3, Crysis 2 and such) with the new series of graphic-cards. Not to say that they have problems with Dolphin but I really think the driver is not that optimized right now for both, AMD and nVidia.

Maybe use another Dolphin build or you just have to wait for a new driver and test out then :/
I know this sucks, but thats the usual case that with the newest graphics-series there are many problems to solve, some experience all together, some don't.

I'm aware there are driver issues such as the anisotropic filtering bug (fixed in Catalyst 12.4), crappy 2D desktop performance when Aero is enabled, power saving bugs (the cards fail to go into lowest power-saving mode and/or reduce the PCI-E bandwidth when idle) , poor performance in OpenCL apps (DirectCompute performs 10 times faster than OpenCL, while the HD5000/6000 series have the same or even better performance with OpenCL).

But I haven't seen any HD7000 series user report such an (emulation-related) performance issue. All they care about is more FPS in BF3 / Skyrim, enthusiast features like Eyefinity, 120Hz, 3D Surround, scaling in Crossfire and that faux-AA crap (MLAA).

Damn, I was going to order one of these new cards soon too. How long will it take for the drivers to get updated?

Quote:Praised for its efficiency

It's praised for its performance. Not its efficiency.

Quote:recommended by quite a few members of this forum (including NV)

I do not recall this. Please show me where I specifically recommended these cards.

Your problem does not make any sense and is probably caused by bad drivers. AMD doesn't test emulator performance when testing their drivers.

(04-23-2012, 07:20 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]It's praised for its performance. Not its efficiency.

Highest performance per watt, also extremely low power consumption at idle and long idle.

Quote:Performance per watt

Yes I know. Let me rephrase: It is praised for its performance. Not its performance per watt.