AMD to Improve CPU Usage in their Catalyst Drivers

AMD to Improve CPU Usage in their Drivers

| Source: Linkedin Author: Mark Campbell

AMD to Improve CPU Usage in their Drivers

Back in the old days ATI were always said to have inferior drivers to Nvidia, and while this has changes in recent year Nvidia have always claimed to have one distinct advantage, that being better CPU usage/ a lower chance of CPU bound performance due to their more CPU efficient Geforce drivers.

While this advantage may seem trivial to many of us, we must remember how important CPU usage can be to the playability of our games. Remember that Next generation Graphics API's like AMD's Mantle, DirectX 12 and OpenGL Next are all designed to make better use of your CPU, among several other advantages.

Finding the CPU efficiency of AMD's and Nvidia's drivers is very hard thing to test, given that no Nvidia or AMD GPU is exactly equal. While Nvidia have done a lot of work recently to improve their CPU efficiency on DX11, in order to combat the advantages of AMD's Mantle API in some recent titles, it is great to see AMD working on CPU efficiency too, as we all know that titles that support AMD's Mantle API are not very common.

In a job posting that AMD posted to Linkedin two day ago, AMD said that they were looking for a "CPU performance Engineer" who would work to "optimize" AMD's Catalyst Graphics drivers. Their job would be to analyse "CPU bound benchmarks and games to identify a variety of CPU bottlenecks in drivers" in order to optimize them and improve the performance of AMD's graphics hardware.

Here is a quote from AMD's Job listing;

"We are looking for a CPU performance engineer working with highly talented 3D graphics driver developers to optimize graphics drivers. The responsibilities include analyzing CPU bound benchmarks and games to identify a variety of CPU bottlenecks in drivers, optimizing the drivers, and providing optimization actions to ISVs. The candidate will analyze new CPU architecture impact on driver performance and translate into actionable tasks. This position requires the candidate to collaborate with graphics and CPU architects at multi-sites across multiple graphics driver components. "

AMD is working to reduce the CPU overhead of their Catalyst drivers as part of their big push to improve AMD's reputation when it comes to driver, which they sadly inherited from ATI. This comes not to long after AMD's Catalyst Omega GPU Drivers which offered up to 29% more performance and a greatly enhanced feature set compared to some of AMD's older drivers.

While I can honestly say, being a user of AMD and Nvidia GPUs in recent years, both are equally good in my eyes, with both providing the same amount of stability.

It is great to see AMD continuing to improve their Catalyst drivers beyond just making specific game optimizations, as we all know every extra bit of performance we can get is useful. I especially look forward to seeing more efficient drivers from AMD in regards to CPU optimization as I am a big fan of strategy games, which are well known for having heavier than average CPU requirements.

You can join the discussion on AMD Improving CPU Usage in their Drivers on the OC3D Forums.

It looks like AMD are Looking to Improve CPU Usage on their Graphics Drivers. http://t.co/MmF1AJrc00 pic.twitter.com/qPE3aKCKPK — OC3D (@OC3D) February 22, 2015

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