Exploring “Frame time” measurement – Part 3 – the GTX 680 versus the HD 7970 GHz Edition
Hitman: Absolution
Hitman: Absolution is an action-adventure stealth game developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix as the fifth entry in the Hitman series. Hitman: Absolution runs on IO Interactive’s own custom DX11 Glacier 2 game engine which was specifically built for it with an emphasis on rendering very dense crowds of up to 1200 individuals. It was released November, 2012 (week 47) and it is ABT’s latest DX11 benchmark.
Here are the settings we chose.
Here is the benchmark run with DOF.
Here it is with DOF disabled. You gain about 2fps by disabling it either on a GTX 680 or a HD 7970 at 1920×1080.
Lets’s look at the frame time chart for the GTX 680. It has a relatively smooth delivery of frames as confirmed by the chart below:
The next chart really does convey the jitter experienced when playing Hitman: Absolution or running the benchmark even though the HD 7970 is faster than the GTX 680. Now the frame time chart for the HD 7970 at GHz edition speeds:
Here is the GTX 680 ranking:
Finally the HD 7970 at GHz Edition speeds ranking.
- Average time: Average time across the entire run
- 1% time: Time it takes to draw 99% of frames
- 0.1%: Time it takes to draw 99.9% of frames
As evidenced by the frame times charts, there is a lot of difference in smoothness experienced by the gamer between playing Hitman: Absolution on a GTX 680 versus playing it on a HD 7970. The benchmark may be more demanding than the game, but the jitter is still evident on the Radeon. Even though the HD 7970 is faster in raw framerates, the frame delivery is uneven and it detracts from gameplay. We will continue to monitor AMD’s drivers in this particular case.
Nice Test. Next one will be in Crossfire/SLi ?
Btw. You’re gonna redo this whole test parcour when AMD releases this new anti Microstutter driver ? http://techreport.com/news/24136/driver-software-blamed-for-radeon-frame-latency-troubles-to-be-fixed-with-updates
Thank-you. The next planned evaluation is a continuation of the GTX 680 vs HD 7970 GHz benching using the rest of our 30 game suite. We are also going to revisit these same tests after AMD releases new drivers.
this was pretty great. I love the ranking. While there a a few extreme cases where AMD is obviously having issues, looking at older games we see that not all hope is lost. AMD obviously is capable of smoothness and we do see several cases where they do better than nvidia. These may be older titles but its a great sign that this is very fixable. The troubling issue is how bad AMD performs in some of these newer games. Its off the chart!
Its especially dramatic when you look back at the games AMD was smoother in and look at the major ugly instances.
This review shows that AMD is capable of producing smooth gaming. I think we will see them address this and perhaps the tables might turn in AMDs favor. Now wouldnt that be fun! I am getting ahead of myself here. We should wait to see how it all pans out first before i start dreaming, lol.
Great work!!!