Poor Radeon HD 2D performance!

[Svyatpro]

Hi Everyone,

Here are mine tests of 2D performance on Radeon HD3850 256MB in comparation with budget GeForce 8500GT 256MB. I was wondered with the results!

Hardware configuration:
AMD Athlon LE-1640 2.7GHz (Single-Core)
Sapphire Radeon HD3850 256MB GDDR3 (OC); Inno3D 8500GT 256MB GDDR2 (OC)
2GB RAM DDR2-800 DC hynix
MSI K9A2 CF (AMD790X)
Seagate ST3500320NS (AHCI)
PSU High Power HPC-460-P12S

Software configuration:
Microsoft Windows XP SP3 (updates till March 2010)
DirectX February 2010
Catalyst 10.3; ForceWare 197.15b

Testing results:

PassMark Performance Test 7:



The most offensive in this, that for Business tasks the Windows Interface speed is very important, but ATi/AMD video cards is behind the budget GF8500GT. Also you can notice VERY(!) poor performance of Transparent Vectors , and also poor performance in image rendering and photo filters which are very important for designers and image editors.

CrystalMark 2004R3 (GDI):


In this test we can also notice very great lag on Radeon HD3850, the lag is almost twice, I am pretty sure that the same lag would be noticable and on High-end ATi Radeon HD58xx family.

The conclusion:
Well, I can conclude based on tests, if ATi/AMD won't fix these 2D performance issues the nVidia videocards would be still the fastest for Business applications, and for Enterprises, which in turn don't want to move to Windows Vista/7.

 

[Thrackan]

You're comparing a 3850 to a 8500 and conclude the 58XX ATI series is slow in 2D?
There are two newer generations for you to test whether this problem has been resolved...

 

[Svyatpro]

look at this http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2d-windows-gdi,2539-8.html

 

[Mussels]

wasnt this fixed in a driver update? (or at least massively improved?)

edit: was something about 5K cards sucking in 2D, and drivers fixed it.




Then again, who gives a damn. everything is in 3D these days unless you're one of the cavemen still on XP.

 

[Thrackan]

From the same TomsHardware link:

Update (1/26/2010): With preliminary research into our 2D performance analysis, AMD reports back with the following:

* Tom’s Hardware has tripped over a workload area (2D lines, etc.) that we have not optimized yet.
* Until this new benchmark, we have not seen any other applications that are bottlenecked by this path, and hence have not focused on it until now.
* Our initial analysis has shown that we have no hardware limitations in this area.
* We now have our driver team engaged to optimize this path and will release a new driver to address this workload as soon as possible.
* We have already found an easy way of increasing our performance greatly, and are now going to try and schedule this in a future Catalyst (need to code in production, validate, ensure it doesn’t break anything else, etc.).

And piss-poor 2D performance doesn't mean 2D doesn't work. I for one don't notice any 2D lag.
Still don't get why you would compare a 3850 to a 8500 though.

 

[Svyatpro]

yeah, yeah, caveman, my PC performance is at about 15-20% better under XP, but in some cases more than twice.

 

[Svyatpro]

Still don't get why you would compare a 3850 to a 8500 though.

Because I don't have another video cards.

 

[Mussels]

Because I don't have another video cards.

and that my friends, is a damn good answer


he compared the cards he had on hand, and shared the results with us.

No need to question his choices of cards, many people around here post benchies when they upgrade.

 

[Svyatpro]

I wrote this post only of wondering, that such an ugly result can be. I am an ATi fun but now don't know which fun am I?!

 

[Mussels]

I wrote this post only of wondering, that such an ugly result can be. I am an ATi fun but now don't know which fun am I?!

Fan, not fun.



does it matter? 2D performance isnt needed for anything.

 

[Svyatpro]

All the applications that uses GDI, GDIPLUS (browsers, graphical editors, text editors, etc..) would render (and even work) faster under nvidia video cards, not depending on Windows version. But On Windows XP/2003 this nv performance gain won't be superfluous because the XP/2003 interface is rendered via GDIPLUS.

 

[Mussels]

All the applications that uses GDI, GDIPLUS (browsers, graphical editors, text editors, etc..) would render (and even work) faster under nvidia video cards, not depending on Windows version. But On Windows XP/2003 this nv performance gain won't be superfluous because the XP/2003 interface is rendered via GDIPLUS.

i was gunna say that in vista/7 everything is done in 3D, there really is no 2D - so would it matter in those OS?

 

[Svyatpro]

GDI/GDIPLUS won't disappear anywhere, even under Win7 your browser render pages via GDIPLUS(2D).