Hitman 2016: PC graphics performance benchmark review

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teaser

Multi-GPU - (FCAT) Frametime experience

 

Frametime and latency performance

With FCAT we will look into Frame Experience Analysis. Basically with the charts shown we are trying to show you graphics anomalies like stutters and glitches in a plotted chart. Lately there has been a new measurement introduced, latency measurements. Basically it is the opposite of FPS.  

  • FPS mostly measures performance, the number of frames rendered per passing second.
  • Frametime AKA Frame Experience recordings mostly measures and exposes anomalies - here we look at how long it takes to render one frame. Measure that chronologically and you can see anomalies like peaks and dips in a plotted chart, indicating something could be off. 
Frame time
in milliseconds
FPS
8.3 120
15 66
20 50
25 40
30 33
50 20
70 14

We have a detailed article (read here) on the new FCAT methodology used, and it also explains why we do not use FRAPS anymore. Frametime - Basically the time it takes to render one frame can be monitored and tagged with a number, this is latency. One frame can take say 17 ms. Higher latency can indicate a slow framerate, and weird latency spikes indicate a stutter, jitter, twitches; basically anomalies that are visible on your monitor.

What Do These Measurements Show?

What these measurements show are anomalies like small glitches and stutters that you can sometimes (and please do read that well, sometimes) see on screen. Below I'd like to run through a couple of titles with you. Bear in mind that Average FPS often matters more than frametime measurements. 

Okay so first let me show you two FPS recording for Multi-GPU gaming versus a single card.



Fury-crossfire-guru3d-hitman

Sli

So above first the overall scaling, Crossfire kicked in once we tried the 16.3.1 Hotfix driver. Both Crossfire and SLI scale nicely. But again at Ultra HD we see the GTX 980 cave in, behaviour we have seen a lot in the recent game performance tests. 

Per

Above an FCAT plot of latency relative to FPS. 50% is the average framerate of the first 31 seconds measured in the benchmark. It should be obvious that Crossfire offers the best scaling in the that timeframe of the benchmark. But looks can be deceiving, below the reason why we always include FCAT results.


Frame Pacing / Frametime - Multi GPU


Plot-crossfire-guru3d-hitman


Above a p frame-time results plot of the test run @ 2560x1440 (WQHD) performed with a Radeon R9 Fury (4GB) in 2560x1440 (WQHD) both single and in Crossfire. Once we installed the 16.3.1 Crimson driver we first did a check by just looking visually at the monitor and observe, afterwards we run FCAT. In the visual check we could see really high framerates, but also a lot of stuttering. Once we run FCAT we see what visually matches up in a plotted chart. Crossfire did work, but there is a lot of stuttering going on. These all are visually perceivable stutters, I can see these with my eyes. The benchmark however well ... not the most optimized one I have seen developed tbh.

I do want to state that with our image quality settings 4 GB is marginal and the game will load up a lot from the storage unit. The faster FPS is, the more IO needs to load in a shorter timeframe.

 

21066_sli

Then above Nvidia; we use a GeForce GTX 980 (also 4GB) at 2560x1440 in single GPU setup and SLI. You can see that the overall scene runs way more fluid compared to AMD. This test run lasts 31 seconds and is based on the first segment in the benchmark (you can try and replicate this yourself). Overall we can't complain here, that one spike is a scene change. 

Plot

And last but not least, everything combined in an overview plot. AMD has the best (low) latency, but varies a lot with a lot of stutters that only occur in multi-GPU mode. The benchmark is wild though, likely in-game things will be a bit more relaxing.

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