Archive for the ‘Benchmark’ tag
Mafia II is not using GPU for PhysX Clothing simulation ?
Everyone who played Mafia II will eventually notice, that enabling special APEX PhysX content will not only bring you flowing clothing and particle debris, but also significantly reduce framerate – even if you have a proper NVIDIA GPU and latest PhysX System Software.
Update: APEX Clothing in numbers
While preparing our PhysX tweaking guide we have discovered that physically simulated clothing on characters is affecting performance the most. Why that ? Cloth is one of the basic effects, used intensively in many GPU PhysX games – just remember Mirror’s Edge and it’s countless tearable banners and flags. Two answers come to mind:
- Clothing simulation in Mafia II is so detailed and so high-resolution, that only top dedicated GPUs can run it at proper fps.
Unlikely. Even in most intensive scenes total cloth vertices count is not exceeding 8000, while framerate is crawling around 20 fps – on GTX 470.
- Clothing simulation is running on CPU, while it is supposed to be hardware accelerated on GPU.
Plausible. Some users, measuring utilization of dedicated PhysX GPUs, have made same conjecture.
Combine it with facts that a) Cloth in PhysX SDK is not using all available CPU resources by default b) Clothing is heavy computational task in any case – and you’ll see the probable reason of poor performance. Let’s check this theory.
PART I – MAFIA II BENCHMARK.
For the first part of tests we’ll use benchmark, built into Mafia II, running with two sets of APEX effects – Clothing only (Particles are disabled using methods from tweaking guide) and Particles only (Clothing is omitted) – and PhysX acceleration enabled/disabled from NVIDIA Control Panel.
Settings: 1680x1024, AO/AA On, AFx16, APEX High. System: C2Q 9400, GTX 470, 4GB RAM, Win 7 x64, 198.32 GPU drivers, PSS 9.10.0513
Interesting results. While Particles are benefiting from GPU acceleration without doubt, PhysX switch is not affecting Clothing simulation at all.
It seems our assumption was correct – APEX Clothing is calculated on CPU in any case – but let’s confirm it with some deeper research.
Mafia II: PhysX Reviews roundup
Mafia II is about to hit the shelves in US, and since it is, probably, most heavyweight title in 2010 GPU PhysX games line, we can expect a lot of detailed reviews about APEX PhysX special effects, added to the game.
We’ve already posted an benchmarks overview for Mafia II Demo, so let’s focus on final version now:
[23.08.10] Mafia II: Perfection for NVIDIA’s Graphics Plus Technologies ? by HardwareCanucks
APEX effects decription and comparison are pretty basic, and only two GPUs [GTX460/GT240 dedicated] were used for testing, but enough attention was paid to CPU scailing [i5/i7] and CPU usage graphs.
According to benchmarks results, Mafia II is pretty playble on CPU even with APEX set to High.
Conclusion:
In the past NVIDIA and their developers took an incredible amount of flak over the use of GPU-processed physics due to the utter lack of optimizations the PhysX API had for the CPU. With Mafia II’s use of the open-minded APEX routines, a corner seems to have been turned because we finally see that it is possible to run these calculations quite smoothly with only a few hiccups on a multi core CPU.
The GPU is still more efficient at physics processing but in some cases you will likely want all of the rendering horsepower it brings to the table. This feature is still nothing more than eye candy but if you can run it, we suggest you do so because it does increase the overall believability of certain scenes.
Mafia II Demo: PhysX Benchmarks roundup
Mafia II demo version was released only few days ago, but several websites have already prepared some benchmarking and testing articles, focused on APEX PhysX part of the game.
Update: Mafia II Final version – PhysX Reviews roundup.
[11.08.2010] Mafia II – Public Demo GPU test by gamegpu.ru
Russian article. Includes game overview and detailed testing part, with various settings and used ATI/NV GPUs.
[11.08.2010] Mafia II Performance Benchmarks: PhysX and 3D Vision Tested by HiTechLegion
Decent review, with some PhysX benchmarks. Author’s conclusion – “I would rather trade graphical quality than play the game in its highest settings with PhysX disabled.”
Mafia II Benchmark: PhysX Comparison
If you haven’t played Mafia II demo, and still wondering what are differences between APEX PhysX effects setting, we have prepared a small video, showcasing several APEX settings using built-in benchmark.
Update: Tweaking PhysX in Mafia II – huge fps increase without noticable difference.
Update #2: comparison PhysX videos for final version, covering APEX Clothing and APEX Particles modules usage in details.
As you may notice, when APEX is set to “High” – a lot of dynamic particles (impact debris, chunks from explosions, smoke) are added, and simulated clothing for characters as well. Detailed effects description is available here.
Unfortunately, this one is not even close our usual detailed comparison videos, so – our apologies.
Full scale APEX Effects comparison is planned only after Mafia II release.
GeForce GTX 480 with GTX 465 for PhysX Benchmarks
It seems that TweakTown loves testing monstrous (and thus redundant for regular user) PhysX configurations. Previously it was HD 5970 + GTX 480, and now – GTX 480 for graphics along with GTX 465 working as dedicated PhysX card.
Update: and yet another article from TweakTown – GTX 480 vs GTX 470 + GTX 260 in PhysX games.
Read the full article.
Performance numbers are great, but GTX 465 does not seems to be a good candidate for such role because of heat, noise and high power consumption. I’m personally waiting for low-end Fermi based GPUs, to reinforce my new GTX 470 
PhysX FluidMark 1.2 ready for download
New version of PhysX FluidMark, benchmarking and testing aplication for GPU PhysX systems, was finally released to public.
- New: added support of multi-core CPUs (PhysX simulation is spread over several threads). New checkboxes are also available to control this feature.
- New: added a checkbox to set the number of particles.
- New: added a checkbox to force CPU PhysX.
- New: added Heavy PhysX mode: to make modern systems with GPU PhysX happy
- New: added point sprite based rendering for particles (keys F2, F3 and F4).
- New: added keyboard-based camera control in stability test mode.
- Change: compiled with NVIDIA PhysX SDK 2.8.3.21.
- Change: updated with the latest version of ZoomGPU for graphics hardware detection.
Update: limitations of GPU PhysX simulation
Update #2: Async mode details
We’ve already did more or less detailed features overview in our FluidMark 1.2 Beta preview article (in addition, more technical details are available from original post), so this time we will just point on certain changes in release version in comparison to beta one.
Main window haven’t underwent much changes.. (click to view full picture)
.. while benchmarking process was improved, to achieve results standardization. Every benchmarking sequence now starts with so called “Warming-Up” state, to ensure that all particles are emitted on the scene. In addition, default settings are now set to 60 000 particles and one minute timed run.
Moreover, new FluidMark 1.2 is now officially approved by Nvidia. According to JeGX, FluidMark developer, NV engineers have helped with bug fixing and overall optimizations, but have not influenced development process in order to give an advantage to GeForce GPUs or penalize CPUs.
Hybrid PhysX: HD 5970 plus GTX 480 System benchmarks
Pretty decent article emerges on TweakTown recently – it contains benchmarks of monstrous Hybrid PhysX system with Sapphire HD 5970 TOXIC card for graphics and GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 480 for PhysX calculations, coupled with Core i7-980 @4.2 GHz CPU and 6 GB of RAM.
Update: Another article from TweakTown. HD 5970 and HD 5870 with GTX 465, GTX 285 and GTX 260 as PhysX cards.
Hardly many people can afford such system, but at least, it is interesting read.
MKZ GPU PhysX Benchmark version 2.2
Our readers may remember Metal Knight Zero Online (MKZ – chinese online-FPS title by Object Software) benchmark, released in mid 2008 as part of GeForce PowerPack #1.
Now, new and enhanced MKZ Benchmark version 2.2, specially developed for Fermi GPUs launch in China, is available.
Compared to previous version, graphics is looking much nicer, game physics (destructible rigid body objects, particles, tearable cloth) is looking more solid and accurate.
JX3: PhysX and CUDA benchmark
New benchmark for chinese MMORPG JX3 (Jianxia 3 – we’ve wrote about GPU PhysX support previously) has emerged silently on Nvidia website. As far as we know, it was firstly shown at recent NGF 2010 event.
Benchmark includes two sequences – first one, Lighting & PhysX benchmark.
Nvidia cripples PhysX performance: True or False ?
Recent news coming from NGOHQ website with statement “performance on non-Cuda cards got dropped even further (from 20 fps to 5 fps [Mirror's Edge]) in the recent PhysX software” have forced us to perform more detailed testing procedures, to discover how actually valid such claims are.
Update: From NGOHQ:
After deeper investigation, this issue has identified as a rare overflow bug. Looks like Nvidia PhysX System Software 9.10.0222 doesn’t cripple performance, but I’ll run more tests just to be sure
In following article we are comparing both GPU and CPU performance of PhysX effects, using most recent PhysX System Software 9.10.0222 (blamed for “ruining game experience”), previous 9.10.0129 version and several games – Mirror’s Edge 1.01 and Cryostasis Tech Demo.
System: C2Q 9400 @2.66 GHz CPU, GTX 275 GPU, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 Professional x64
MIRROR’S EDGE.
Standart “Flight Fly By” sequence was used (can be activated by “- FlybyFlight” parameter), in-game setting; 1680×1050, all high, 4xAA. Framerate measured by FRAPS 3.0.1.
